


The Three of Us

by josephina_x



Series: Threesome??? Uh, -no- [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: (or close enough to it), Canon Sexuality, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, rated for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lana does not take no for an answer. The boys are not happy about this.</p><p>And then a lot of other stuff happens that screws with people's heads. Oops.</p><p>(...Does this count as sexual harrassment? Anyone? Anyone?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Three of Us  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Lexana, LOLiver, Clark + Lex, Clark + Lana, Clark + Lois  
> Rating: R (for language)  
> Spoilers: up through 6x04 explicitly; general for season 6  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: In which Lana does not take no for an answer. The boys are not happy about this.
> 
> And then a lot of other stuff happens that screws with people's heads. Oops.
> 
> (...Does this count as sexual harrassment? Anyone? Anyone?)  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd. ???  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Follow-on to Bisexual? (which comes after The Thing Which Shall Not Be Named). Because I can.
> 
> Admittedly, the fic-to-episode timeline is a little screwy here. I said in fic #1 that Clark started messing with Lex for awhile shortly after 6x04 (after listening in on him for three days, but not long enough that 6x04 was more than 'a few days ago' according to Lex), and I wrote at the end of fic #2 that it had been about a month since Clark had stopped messing with Lex (as per what Lex told Lana). (...Note to self: remember to _always_ figure out the timeline before writing fic to avoid these problems in the future.)
> 
> (Oh well, it was originally supposed to be a one-shot anyway, and the second one was just supposed to be yet more unserious crack.)
> 
> ...Eh, screw it: I'm assuming that the end of last fic / the beginning of this one starts almost a week after Fallout (6x06) and shortly before Rage (6x07), and progresses from there.
> 
> So Clark is sort-of talking to Lex and Lana (or at least checking up on them when he has to), Lex isn't telling Clark about anything important if he can get away with it (why he/Lex was attacked at the mansion, that the black box shard was then absorbed by the Zoner Baern, etc.), and Lana is telling Clark things when confronted directly (Lana told Clark the shard was destroyed after Clark showed her the black box schematic picture, which Raya had identified for him as a shard of the BrainIAC computer -- a picture which Clark got from Chloe, who got it from Jimmy, who had photographed it from under Lex's see-through desk when confronting him about a limo exchange that was really Lana originally stealing the black box from Lex, which Lana did only to give it back to Lex later in a bid to try to make him choose between her and the black box, right before the Zoner attacked them and absorbed it, thus putting off the question, fear my l33t summarizing skills, ahem).
> 
> As a reminder ('cause lord knows I certainly needed one after all this time, Season 6 aired in freaking 2006 guys!), the fallout from the episode Fallout (heh) is that Raya is dead (after Baern's attack) and the Fortress is powered again (after Baern was destroyed when all of his energy was absorbed by the Crystal of El); Clark has made the decision to start his training at the Fortress soon, once he recaptures all of the Zoners (a la Raya's influence and subsequent death, the latter of which has left Clark a touch depressed); and Lana is totally unrepentant about lying to and stealing from Lex and is glad that Zod's alien black box was destroyed, up to and including telling all of this straight to Lex's face (thus straining their relationship further, and I am playing the whole blowup last fic -- 'go have sex with Clark' -- as yet another facet of the tension in Lex and Lana's somewhat-strained relationship, especially the way Lana was pushing him hard during this time period in canon).
> 
> Yet again, yay for the [Smallville Wikia](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Season_6) as my go-to reference source for most all things Smallville episode-related. (...except for transcripts, which I now tend to get [from here](http://foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6903&sid=135838fdcf62f58a2768b5037ebfaa7d#.UsdsO-VOnML).)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sighed to himself as he brought the newest batch of muffins into the Talon. He still hadn't figured out a way to use his 'heat vision'-cum- _laser eye beams_ to speed up the process without them coming out tasting yucky, so it had taken him most of the morning to make them the old-fashioned way.

...most of the _rest_ of the morning, anyway, that hadn't already been spent dealing with the aftermath of a Lex stealing his couch and asking after sex (not in that order, possibly high at the time while asking) and a Lana who had sent him there (asking after sex, not the couch-stealing part) because apparently the kicking-himself-out-of-the-house-slash-mansion part had been Lex's idea, not the having-sex-with-Clark part. So Lex apparently hadn't been high after all.

Because the having-sex-with-Clark part had been _Lana's_ idea.

Apparently.

(... _Lex_ having-sex-with-Clark, that is, not Lana.)

(Not that Clark could have said yes to sex with Lana even if it had been the other way around, because _Kryptonian strength_ , and ergh.)

Some days it really sucked to not be human.

\-- _Most_ days. _Most_ days it sucked not to be human.

Clark shook his head, wished he'd gotten more sleep the night before (could he maybe get away with taking a nap later that day?) and wondered if maybe, just maybe, the explanation for that morning was not that _Lex_ had been high, but that **_both_ Lana and Lex** had been high.

And, even if he wanted to help fix whatever it was that was making Lana act crazy before either of them went completely psychotic, so Lex could stop acting crazy, too (and then go back to being only a sane, normal level of Evil), Clark had no idea how to go about doing that for Lex. And it wasn't like a good solid hug could fix this one, either, not that Clark trusted Lex's hugs to be non-Evil these days.

"So you should just kiss him," Lana said.

Clark blinked, set the muffin tray down on the counter, and looked down and to his left.

Lex was standing there, facing him, leaning against the counter and not looking very happy.

Lana was standing there, with her back to Clark. She was facing Lex and had her arms crossed.

Lex glanced up and noticed Clark.

Lex adopted a bland expression and took a sip of his cappucino-coffee, or whatever-it-was without-whipped-cream.

Lana turned around and looked slightly startled -- as she realized Clark was standing right there? -- then smiled up at Clark.

Clark glanced between them and caught Lex eyeing him, almost a warning look.

Clark got a sinking feeling as he refocused his attention and stared down at Lana.

"Lana," he said slowly, letting go of the muffin tray and about to more-or-less run away to get out of dodge.

Except he was sleep-deprived (all Lex's fault, or maybe Lana's) so when he noticed something odd, instead of ignoring it like any sane, rational adult person should have...

He paused and asked, "...Why do you both smell like lavender?" a little blankly, because Lana liked to use coconut oil bodywash, and yes, he could see Lex stealing some of that -- not that Clark had ever done that himself! -- because that stuff was nice. But that was the wrong scent, and...

Lex and Lana both looked up at him.

Neither of their looks were really all that helpful _or_ explanatory.

"Hey, what's with the high-noon stare-down here?" Lois asked, trotting down the stairs from the Talon loft apartment and sidling around the counter and up to the three of them.

"Clark wants to know why we both smell like lavender," Lana said neutrally, still looking Clark in the eye, while Lex stood there and took a sip of coffee, not making eye contact with anyone in particular.

Clark glanced over at Lois for an explanation.

Lois raised an eyebrow at Clark.

Right. (Why was he expecting an explanation from Lois, again?) Clark tried not to sigh in frustration.

"Lana only ever uses lavender-smelling stuff in her shampoo," he explained, crossing his arms, and Lex wouldn't steal her _shampoo_. It really didn't make any sense.

Lois looked vaguely amused, and Clark really didn't understand why.

"Oh, Smallville," she said. "Really? _Really?_ " and then she ruffled his hair.

Clark half-ducked, half pulled away from her, frowning. "--What?" he said, irritated, as he ran a hand through his hair to fix it, and why was Lois staring at him like that?

...And shaking her head and sighing at him, " _Small_ ville. That's just... sad."

Clark frowned at her, crossed arms again, a little more defensively, then looked over and Lana, then at Lex.

Everybody seemed to be getting it but him. And nobody looked like they were about to explain.

Well, that didn't exactly improve his mood. Now he just felt irritated. (Yeah, okay? He was a stupid alien who doesn't get it, always on the outside of things, but did anybody ever think that was maybe only because nobody would ever just _explain!_ )

Screw this. He'd ask Chloe later. _She'd_ explain it to him. _She_ was _good_ about stuff like this.

In a perfectly grown-up and mature response to their unhelpfulness, Clark spent some time turning his back on the world for awhile and ignoring them with ruthless -- and completely justified -- intent. He instead shoving the tray of baked goods onto the counter a little further, and worked at trying not to mutter to himself as he pulled the top off the long display case on the counter and restocked the muffin area for the Talon staff, so they didn't have to. Because he was nice like that and it usually made the waitresses smile.

When he picked up the now-empty muffin tray under one arm and turned back around, Lois was looking at him sideways.

"Y'know," Lois told him, "You're usually a little quicker on the uptake. And in a better mood. What happened to cheerful morning-person Clark?"

Clark just rolled his eyes. "He didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and then didn't have anything to look forward to the next morning to cheer him up, like maybe a grumpy-you with a hangover?" he said rhetorically, because coming out on top after messing with her was usually the highlight of his day, really. (--When he could pull it off, that is.)

Also, she deserved it for being annoying.

Lois stared up at him, then got a slow smile.

Clark got a sinking feeling again.

"You didn't get a lot of sleep last night?" Lois did _not_ ask him in rising tones. --She asked him in _implied_ tones. **Heavily.** And started to grin at him.

Oh for the love of... "God! Lex slept on the _couch_ , okay! And I was in my room! We were sleeping **separately!** " Clark told her, "Whole rooms and a staircase separately!" because he remembered Lois and the whole shower thing, and yes she was not his mom, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't misunderstand just for the hell of it, to make his life more difficult, if she could.

Lois's eyebrows went up and the corners of her mouth went back down. " _Luthor_ stayed the night at _the farm?_ "

Oh. Great. Apparently that part hadn't made it through the town grapevine yet.

"Yes."

"At _the farm_ ," Lois repeated.

"Well, it's not like I invited him over -- he just showed up unannounced!" Clark griped at her, pointedly _not_ sending a glare Lex's way, because it wasn't like Lex would care or anything if he did. Glare at him. Because he was Evil, and Evil did not care about Clark-glares.

Lois frowned at him slightly, like she was trying to figure something out. "I thought you two weren't... _friends_... anymore."

Clark heard more than saw Lex shift slightly, on the other side of Lana from him. _Yeah, you **should** still feel bad about why that is, you jerk._ Friends don't sic psycho meteor-freaks on friends' family members and make them have to practically kill themselves trying to break into places to steal stuff, then not get it, then almost die trying to take on the meteor freaks _without powers_ because they were that desperate and the alternative was worse.

To Lois, Clark agreed with some exasperation, "Right, we aren't friends anymore." Then, when she didn't seem to get it, he added (because _he_ was willing to explain things to people, unlike _some_ people he could name): "But it's not like I want him dead." And Lois still didn't seem to get it. "I was pretty sure he was high." (Nothing.) "It was eleven o'clock at night." (Blank look.) "He shouldn't be out driving when he's all... whatever." (...Seriously?) "--He could've gotten in a car accident!" (Didn't Lois know Lex's track record with cars? She'd certainly been in town long enough to know by now, long-since. Clark suspected it was secretly why Lex owned so many. --It was because he had to, to be able to actually have something to drive around any given day of the week.) "And that would have been a bad thing." (Because Lex was already Evil enough as it was -- another car accident _now_ might end up pissing him off and leaving him liable to Evil things up even more than usual, assuming he survived it. Also, if Lex ended up dying in a firery car crash instead, Lana would be sad.)

"...Uh huh," said Lois.

Clark sighed. (Why did he even bother?) "Lana kicked him out of the mansion and he needed someplace to sleep that wasn't a car, because the back seats of all his cars are too small to sleep in?" he tried.

Lois stared at him for a bit.

Then she asked him carefully, "Why do you think Luthor come over to _the farm_ instead of going to a motel or something instead?"

...That was a _really_ good question. "I don't know, why don't you ask him -- he's standing right there," Clark pointed out.

Lois glanced over at Lex, then moved her eyes back over to Clark and cocked her head, giving him a steady look.

Then Clark got the gist of the 'why do _you_ think' part of Lois' 'why'. _Argh._

"Maybe because he wanted me to punch him or something, and that's where I was?" Clark tried, remembering what Lex had said to Lana that morning. "Except he never says stuff like that straight out," _...well, not to **me** , anyway..._ "and I didn't get it this time _because it was eleven o'clock at night when he woke me up and I was tired_ ," Clark told her adamantly.

And then Clark turned to Lana. "And Lex was probably too tired or whatever to think straight, too, so when you told him to come over and have sex with me, **he** didn't get that **you didn't mean it** ," he glowered down at her. And, come to think of it...

"You need to not tell him things like that," Clark added. "I don't think he gets stuff like that even when he's _not_ high. Or really tired. Or **whatever** ," Clark told her, because he _so_ did not need a repeat of the previous night again. Or that morning.

...And now Lana was turning kind of red.

Clark gritted his teeth, and held his ground, and told himself firmly that he did not care, he did _not_ care, he **did not care**.

Clark turned back to Lois. "So are we done with the twenty questions, yet?" Because he really wanted to get some sleep in, if he still had time that afternoon, and he really didn't need Lois running him down and continuing to pester him because she wasn't finished with him yet. She'd only gotten worse about that stuff since she'd gotten that reporting job at the Inquisitor, but this also meant that she had actual rules about how she did it now. So it was a lot safer to get actual verbal confirmation from her before attempting escape, rather than disappearing on her which made her suspicious, these days. "Can I _go_ now?"

"Uh, sure Smallville," Lois said, looking something like amused at him for whatever reason.

"Good," said Clark, "because I really don't want to know why Lana is trying to get Lex to kiss other guys when they're supposed to be dating each other, and not other people," because it was totally not his problem. At all.

And if Lana was on something mind-bendy that she was still coming down off of? Chloe could figure that one out on her own time, by herself, without him, this time. Assuming she needed to step in, anyway. At least what he'd walked in on at the counter had sounded like Lana had downgraded from trying to talk Lex into male sex, to trying to talk Lex into just kissing some other guy, so maybe it'd just wear off on its own. Hopefully soon.

He thought he might've heard Lois stifle a laugh as he strode out of the Talon and, really, he totally _did not care_.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex sighed. Heavily.

"He... he did **not** just..." Lana said huffily, coloring again.

"Yeah, Smallville's kind of fun on no sleep, right?" Lane said perkily, with a shit-eating grin to match.

Lana turned to her and gave her a very dark _look_.

Lex thought Clark had made a good point though: he was not in an open relationship with Lana. It was supposed to be exclusive. So why did she keep trying to set him up with other guys?

Not that he was going to raise that point out loud himself. (...again.) He wasn't **stupid**.

He took another sip of his coffee.

"He should be back to his usual farmboy self after a nap," Lane informed them. "And he's been doing small daily batches of muffins for the Talon twice a day, so he'll be back in a couple hours. Wanna ambush him again then?" she asked Lana.

Lex nearly choked on his coffee, when Lana's eyes narrowed and she nodded once. He watched her as she watched Clark exit, tracking him. Then he watched her still in place and frown.

She glanced over at Lois. " _He's_ been...?" Lana asked.

"Well, yeah," Lois said, apparently knowledgeable about this sort of thing from her time spent helping Mrs. Kent by working the place as a waitress, and her continuing residence in the apartment up above. "Mrs. K's in D.C., and Clark knows how to bake, too. Otherwise we'd be in trouble," she snickered.

At Lana's puzzled look, Lex wondered how she'd thought the muffins had been being produced all this time, if she hadn't thought Clark had been the one making them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex sighed. Heavily.

And then he took a sip of his latest cup of coffee.

Earlier that morning, as bad as Lana's willingness to 'ambush Clark' had been, he hadn't exactly imagined that his _significant other_ would forcibly drag him along to the 'ambush' with her. For one thing, he had work to do.

For another, he didn't exactly want to see Clark again.

For a third, he had a growing suspicion that his miraculous six-hour reprieve on all things bisexual-related was now about to run out on him.

He heard voices outside the door and braced himself.

There was a key in the lock, and then...

"...sure you have the rest of today off?" Lex heard Clark say as the door opened. "I thought you were working out of the Metropolis office every day except--"

"--Nope!" Lois said brightly as she walked in. "With the number of quality stories I've been putting out lately, I've been put on salary now, so my hours are more flexible again; besides, I'm out on the beat more often than in-office these days."

"'Out on the beat'?" Clark repeated sarcastically as he walked in after her, then stopped when he saw Lex and Lana.

He executed a flawless 180-degree turn to walk himself right back out again, but Lois had already taken three steps backwards and closed the door, leaning against the wooden surface with her hand on the knob.

And then, with her eyes firmly on Clark's, she reached up to the deadbolt and authoritatively locked it.

From his vantage point sitting on one of the couches in the living room, next to Lana, Lex saw Clark give Lois a look of pure irritation.

" _You_ wanted to talk to me about something real quick?" Clark said, with a cadence that made it clear that he was repeating something Lois had said earlier. He crossed his arms and looked at her testily.

"Well, how else was I supposed to get you up here?" Lois said as she pushed off of the door, without displaying the least bit of shame at having tricked him into coming up into her Talon apartment with an unwelcome ambush lying in wait for him.

"This doesn't have anything to do with you!" Clark protested.

"Lana's my friend, too," Lois pointed out, "not just Chloe's."

Clark refolded his arms and grumbled something Lex couldn't quite make out from across the room, but he was glaring daggers at Lane, so it probably hadn't been anything one would exactly consider _kind_.

Lane pretty much ignored his ire. "Go on," she told him, making a shooing motion with her hands. "Sit down over there."

Clark glanced over at Lana and Lex, then turned away and grimaced. He stayed where he was by the door, making no move towards them.

Lois sighed, dropped her shoulders as she rolled her eyes skyward, and reached forward to grab Clark by the wrist. She then more or less got him turned around and proceeded to haul him at arms length over to the center of the living room, then shove him down into a chair by way of a firm hand on his shoulder.

Clark clenched his jaw, crossed his arms again, and refused to look at any of them as Lois pulled up another chair and plunked down on it backwards, watching them all.

They all sat there in silence for a few long moments, glaring at each other with varying degrees of eye-contact avoidance and general annoyance at life, the universe, and certain meddling females in the room.

Lex took the lull in conversation to spend some quality time with his beverage. He loved coffee; it wasn't judgmental, it never argued with him. It accepted him as he was, without making up all sorts of odd theories about his person.

Lex sipped his coffee.

Lois eyed Clark for awhile, then said, "You totally didn't have that nap this afternoon, did you."

"I really wish I had," Clark sighed. At the look Lois gave him in response, he snapped back, "--I was busy!"

"Because you couldn't put off feeding the cows?" Lois snarked.

"They need hay too, not just grass, and most of the rest of the things I have to do on the farm, I have to do when it's still light out," Clark muttered. "And I still had to bake more things and get them to people today."

"Chh, 'people,' my hairy..." Lois waved off, then, "...Wait, you're not just baking for the Talon anymore?" Lois sat up in her chair. "--You've got other customers!"

Clark shrugged neutrally and Lois grinned and leaned forward to punch him in the shoulder, which had him sighing and putting up with her enthusiasm with stoicism, mostly -- except for a slight eyeroll that got away from him anyway.

Lana cleared her throat lightly.

"Oh, uh, right," Lois said, sobering and leaning back in her chair again in a more neutral posture. "--Smallville, these two wanted to talk with you about something," she told him, pointing a thumb their way.

Clark shifted in his seat, and glanced between Lex and Lana, and Lex got the feeling from the way Clark's eyes met his own that he got that Lex didn't want to be here doing this any more than he did.

"...Okay," Clark said, leaning back in his chair slightly and glancing back over at Lana. Surprisingly enough, he seemed to be approaching Lana with a great deal more reserve than he'd displayed to _Lex_ the night before. "What do you want to talk about?"

Lana glanced at Lex for a moment, and Lex dropped his gaze off and to the side as he fingered his coffee cup absently, not wanting any part of this.

So Lana was the one to turn back to Clark and answer him, and she said, "Did you know that Lex is bisexual?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Lex saw Clark frown slightly, and then he heard him say, "Lex isn't bisexual."

Lex slowly brought his head up.

Lana looked a little annoyed for some reason. "Yes, he is."

"No, he isn't," Clark repeated definitively, shifting his crossed his arms.

"Uh, Smallville--" Lois began, and Lex turned and blinked at her.

Clark turned and stared at her.

Then he glanced back at Lana.

Then he glanced between the girls and said, "Okay, who told you that Lex is bisexual?"

"Oliver, eventually." "No-one, it's obvious."

 _Oh, dear lord,_ thought Lex.

Clark exchanged a look with Lex, and Lex sighed and looked away first.

Clark adopted a look of murderous patience and turned to Lois.

"Lois," Clark told her slowly, as if speaking to a small child. "Oliver and Lex do not get along. Oliver was messing with you." He paused. "And maybe Lex, too, because he knew you'd get all excited about it."

Lois spluttered. "I'm not _excited_ about--!"

Clark ignored Lois' further protests and turned back to Lana.

"Lana, Lex is not bisexual," he told her in the same tones he'd used on Lois. "Lex is straight."

Lana colored, and Lane chimed in with, "Well, how do _you_ know?"

Clark turned back to her and frowned slightly. "...Because he's straight?" he said, like it was obvious -- about as obvious as Lex would have thought it would be to just about anyone, in fact.

And, for some reason, now Lane looked like she was going in for the kill.

"Okay," said Lane. "What about you?"

 _Oh,_ thought Lex.

"'What about me', what?" Clark said blankly.

 _Oh, hell,_ Lex thought, as he felt slightly disconnected from life and the world in general for a moment, because was this really happening?

"Are you bisexual?" Lane asked him.

 _Shit,_ yes it was. ...Probably because Clark had been too tired before to pick up on any of Lane's insinuations earlier that day, and Lane was too brain-dead to realize that what Clark _didn't_ say never had any bearing on what he was trying to hide. --When Clark lied, he lied _with words_ , not a _lack_ of words.

Clark stared at her for a moment with a slight frown, like he was trying to parse her meaning.

And then Clark's expression cleared slightly and he blinked. Once. And then he--

Hesitated. And frowned slightly, looked down, and blinked again.

And only _then_ did he look back up and say to her, "No, I'm straight."

 _Shit, shit, shit,_ thought Lex, because there had been that long, hesitating pause in there where Clark had actually _stopped and considered the question seriously_ instead of answering immediately. There was no way Lane would actually take what he'd said at face-value, if only because Clark didn't do that often enough for it to be likely for Lane to actually know what that looked like on him, and that sort of pause usually came across as weird on anybody else.

" _Aha!_ " Lane proclaimed, pointing at Clark, and Lex resisted the urge to facepalm, because couldn't he be wrong for once? In a _good_ way? Was that really too much to ask?

Clark blinked at her again.

Lex snuck a glance at Lana, who was sitting still as a statue and starting to look a little pale.

 _Ah..._ thought Lex, weakly. Because apparently it got worse.

"'Aha' what?" Clark said to Lane, completely confused.

"You're bisexual!" Lois declared.

Clark stared at her like she had two heads, and neither of them was working properly.

"No, I'm straight," Clark repeated again, very slowly.

"No, you're bisexual," Lois said, with no small satisfaction.

Clark frowned at her, like he was wondering if maybe he was speaking another language.

"...Why do you think I'm bisexual?" he asked her slowly.

"Because you said you're straight," Lois said authoritatively.

Clark sat there for a moment, stumped.

He turned and looked at Lex, with a crease between his eyebrows.

"No, you really are speaking plain English," Lex informed him shortly, probably not being all that reassuring, considering.

He watched and listened as Clark and Lois bickered and argued back and forth for several minutes, taking another sip of coffee and sneaking glance after glance at Lana, who was disturbingly quiet throughout.

...It was a sad thing that Lana was apparently too busy staring at Clark in vague horror, caught up in her own thoughts, for it to register with her exactly how crazy Lane was acting. In Lex's vaunted opinion, it was truly unfortunate that Lane's antics, as a good bad example of Lana's own behavior towards him, were clearly not going to be pushing his girlfriend-slash-significant-other into confronting her own crazy thought processes this day. Pity, that.

Lex set his coffee cup back down in his lap and sighed.

"--Right," Clark said authoritatively, finally thoroughly fed up with Lane, as he stood up and shoved a hand into his back pocket.

"Hey, where are you--" Lois protested, beginning to rise from her chair, but Clark held up a finger and cut her off, as he finished dialing his cellphone and put it to his ear.

Lane slowly sank back down into her chair again, not quite glaring at his backside, as Clark turned away from her and took a step or two towards the kitchen. "Hello, Chloe?" Lex heard him say.

Lex watched Clark glance over his shoulder at Lois and then ask, "Yeah, um, not so great. Can I ask you something really quick?" Slight pause. "Do you think I'm bisexual? Or Lex?" Lex watched Clark's shoulders relax and fall. "Okay, _good_. I think Lois and Lana might be high on something--"

"-- _Hey!_ " Lois protested, shooting to her feet, while Lana's mouth dropped slightly, and Lex had to stifle a laugh down to a cough and the faintest of smiles.

"--and maybe you might've noticed... Oh," said Clark, looking a little put out. "I don't know. Hold on," he said, then put a hand over the microphone at the bottom of it and turned back towards Lane. "Hey, Lois, when did you first start thinking--"

"Oliver wasn't lying," Lane said, sounding frustrated as she paced towards Clark.

"--okay, fine, I mean about me?" Clark revised.

"...Maybe this morning? Why?" Lane asked suspiciously.

"Okay," said Clark, before turning to Lana. "Lana--"

"No-one told me anything; it's the way Lex has been acting," Lana told Clark angrily. "And--"

Clark frowned, then looked at Lex. "Wait, you've been cheating on Lana?" he said, straightening to his full height and looking both shocked and angry, of all things, which Lex hadn't really expected at all -- shouldn't Clark have been more relieved or happy that he might have a chance with Lana again, if he thought that might be true?

...Then again, maybe in this instance chivalry was winning out over common sense.

Best put that thought to rest quickly. "No, I haven't been cheating on Lana," Lex informed him dryly.

"--No he hasn't!" Lana said, backing him up, and sounding shocked at the very thought of Lex seeing somebody else. That had both Lex and Clark turning to stare at her, because hadn't she _just_ been trying to set them up with each other? Or at least get them to have sex and...? _No, no, never mind,_ Lex was **not** going there, thank you very much -- that way lay madness.

Clark let out a breath. "Okay, that's what I th--" Clark stopped, then ducked his head slightly and turned away, frowning as he brought the phone in closer to his ear again to pay a bit more attention to Chloe on his phone for a moment.

"Why would you think he was cheating on her?" Lane asked of Clark bloody-mindedly, jumping on the fact that that had seemingly been Clark's first thought.

"Because Lana said it was the way Lex was acting," Clark told her absently, with his hand still over the speaker. "And if it was Lex doing something that made her think he was bisexual, then she'd have had to catch him with a guy doing something like kissing them, unless she's under the influence of something," and Lex was starting to like sleep-deprived Clark far better than normal-Clark because, for whatever reason, sleep-deprived Clark seemed to be far better at handing out unassailable logic to people. Consistently, even.

"Actually, it was something more along the lines of my spending inordinate amounts of time around other bisexual and gay men and various charity galas and functions," Lex informed Clark, just to see what would happen.

"Uh, what?" Clark said, his phone slowly coming down off of his ear. "--Okay," he said into his phone quickly, then covered it again. "Hold on, since when do you have friends?" Clark asked him.

Lex stifled a sour look, because it wasn't like Clark didn't have a point. Neither Duncan nor Clark had actually counted, each having turned on him the first time he had really needed them to help him improve their respective situations overall. First Oliver and his goons, and then Fine and his Kryptonian masters.

Besides, the guys were: "Not friends; just talking partners," Lex corrected Clark thinly.

"...Okay," said Clark. "Fine. 'Talking partners'. Whatever. Since when does hanging out with bisexual people make anyone--"

"--Birds of a feather," Lana cut in, and Lois nodded along.

Clark gave them both weird looks.

"I spend half my day around cows on the farm, and that doesn't make me a cow," he put out there.

This garnered him dark looks from both girls.

"That is not the same thing, Clark!" Lana told him.

"Yes, it is," Clark said.

Lex rubbed at the bridge of his nose, and tried desperately not to laugh. His lips twitched upwards at the corners, though, several times, and that was the best he could manage under the circumstances.

"You could help, you know," Clark put out there, clearly annoyed with him for his lack of 'support' at this point.

"Believe me, I've tried," Lex told him expressively, then looked up at the sound of a key turning in the lock at the front door.

Clark looked over, then clicked off his phone and put it away, sighing, as he headed for the door.

"Hey--! Oh, no you _don't!_ We're not done talking about--" Lois protested, dogging his heels and following him over, as Clark opened the door and--

\--helped Chloe with a large box of paperwork that she dumped in his hands, as she shoved her way inside.

"Okay, what the heck is going on again?" Chloe asked, as she walked in and dropped her purse and laptop bag down into a wingbacked chair off to the side, in quick succession.

Clark kicked the door closed behind her and followed her in. After he set the box down carefully next to the chair behind her, he straightened, and gave Chloe a rundown of the situation as she was busy taking off her coat: "Lana thinks Lex is bisexual because some of the people he's been talking with are bisexual and apparently don't hate him like everybody else who knows him and are straight do. Lois thinks Lex is bisexual because Oliver is an idiot, and thinks I'm bisexual because I told her I was straight."

Chloe threw her coat over the back of the chair and sat down on the arm of it. " _Seriously_ , Lois?" she asked of her cousin.

"It was the _way_ he said it," Lois said defensively, standing there and crossing her arms.

Chloe looked up at Clark, who shook his head slightly, looking just plain tired.

Chloe frowned up at Clark, then blinked at him and gave Clark a considering look.

Clark rolled his eyes.

The edges of Chloe's mouth turned up.

As Clark turned away and sat down in his chair again, Chloe looked over at Lane and informed her cousin, sounding amused: "Lois, Clark is straight. Really."

"Okay, see, you're doing it, too!" Lane said accusingly, taking an aggressive stance.

Chloe's eyebrows went up.

" _You see?!_ " Clark said, sounding aggrieved as he _literally_ threw his hands up in the air at her.

"Uh huh," Chloe said almost absently, frowning up at Lois carefully, like she was looking for something, almost.

"What?" said Lane, then, "Hey, hey, I'm not actually high! I don't do that crap. Alcohol is my bitch, remember?"

"Uh huh," Chloe said, standing up from her perch on the chair arm and sounding amused all over again.

Lex's phone vibrated, so he pulled it out. He glanced down at the screen, then unlocked it and typed out a quick response.

"You could've been _accidentally_ exposed to something," Clark muttered from his chair, which garnered him a dirty look from Lane.

"Chloe, it totally makes sense," Lois protested, trailing after her cousin. "Clark--"

"--is asexual, not aromantic," Lex cut in as he slipped his phone away, because this was getting ridiculous, and he might as well put Clark out of his misery now before he had to deal with _two_ women trying to set him up with Clark, one of them _supposedly_ his girlfriend and the other of them a **Lane**.

Well, at least Chloe didn't seem to be on the bandwagon. Even if she _was_ the one who had originally earwormed Lana with the idea of a threesome between him, her, and Clark. For Chloe, it must have been a throwaway joke. Unlike others Lex could mention.

Lane stopped in place abruptly and blinked at Lex as his pronouncement as to Clark's orientation and inclinations registered, then glanced over at Clark.

Clark more or less frowned at everyone in general.

"Oh," said Lane. "Uh."

Clark sighed. Deeply.

"--Not that there's anything wrong with that," Lane began, raising her hands palms-outward, then cut herself off at the flat look Clark gave her.

"Are you attracted to Lex at all?" Lana cut in, apropos of nothing.

"What?" Clark said blankly, then Clark started and stared at her with something approaching shock and disgust. "Okay, I know that our sex-ed unit in tenth grade got screwed up, because _Desiree_ ," Clark said, like that was an excuse -- ...hmm, well, actually, maybe it _was_ , considering... -- "but Chloe worked really hard to put out a bunch of informative articles that week and the next one after that to try and make up for her being all..." Clark waved a hand about in a descriptive manner.

"Wait, was that in 2002?" Lane asked.

"...Yeah," said Clark, eyeing her.

"Huh," Lane said reflectively. "I think I helped her with some of those via email."

"Well, did you read any of the final copy?" Clark asked her testily.

"Clark--" Lana insisted.

"No, Lana, I do not want to--" He made a face and waved a hand at Lex. "--anything with him! _Geez._ " Clark rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and looked at her like he was completly unsure about what would come out of her mouth next.

Lex wondered if he should be offended at Clark's pronouncement, then he mentally shook himself and instead wondered if all of this was slowly driving him **insane**.

"Really," Lana said dryly, remaning unconvinced. "Because the rest of the guys he knows want to fuck him."

Clark blinked and straightened. "Wait, what?" he asked, then turned to look at Lex.

And Lex was suddenly subjected to the most disturbingly-familiar frown.

"You're getting stalked by psycho-sex-freaks again?" Clark demanded of him.

Lex had to work harder than he'd have liked to keep his expression placid in the face of this.

"No," he told Clark cooly, because, dammit, that had only been the one time! _One time_ that he'd been drugged and woken up in a bed next to a dead body and framed for murder by an ex-one-night-stand, not _several!_

...unless Desiree counted, too, and maybe Helen, and--

Lex shook himself mentally. **He was not going there.**

"Wait, he had _what_ happen now?" Lane asked, and Lex slowly closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and stifled a curse on the outbreath.

"Yes, he _is_ getting stalked by psycho-sex-freaks again," Lana put out there authoritatively, and Lex opened his eyes and shot her a narrow-eyed look because he'd _said_ he was going to talk with them and take care of that!

"Oh, c'mon, they're not that bad," Lane chimed in. "I bet they wouldn't do anything you two wouldn't want them to."

Lex turned and stared at her, because _what the hell?_

Clark, meanwhile, sighed and turned to the saner of the Sullivan-Lane girls. "--Chloe?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah, gimmie a sec," Chloe said, rummaging in her bag for her laptop and pulling it out. Clark moved over closer to her, to hover at her elbow.

Lana, meanwhile, engaged Lane over her outrageous comment, as Lex sat back on the couch and began a wholly-futile attempt at staying the hell out of it. "I've already told them no, and they're still panting after him!" Lana told Lois testily, clearly meaning to hash the point out with her.

"Well, _he_ hasn't told them no yet," Lane said, settling back in her chair again and talking across him as if he wasn't even there. Not that that was the worst of the problem he had with her for it. Lex was far more engaged at the moment in trying not to think about how she would even know that, or how she might've found that out...

"...Okay, here we go," Chloe said, laptop open and on her lap, and she turned it towards Clark as he bent down to look over her shoulder. "Photos of him at the most recent gala with--"

"Oh, hey, that's Craig," Clark said, pointing at the screen, then he frowned. "Hey, _he's_ not psycho!" he exclaimed, looking up at Lana with no small accusation, who was staring back at him from the couch in something akin to shock.

Lex just sat where he was and blinked at Clark, because--

"--How the heck do _you_ know _him?_ " Lane asked for him.

"Oh, I met him one summer in Metropolis," Clark said as if it was nothing, while looking at the laptop screen in front of him, then tensed and quickly added, glancing up at Lane again, "--Not _that_ summer," which left Lex wondering which summer Clark _wasn't_ referring to -- wasn't the only crazy summer of record for Clark the one that had happened in Metropolis while Lex himself had been half a world away, stranded on an uninhabited island by Helen?

What was even more notable seemed to be the way Clark was glancing over the screen as Chloe seemed to be clicking through images, his frown slightly deepening. Because if Lex was reading him right...

"--You know all of them?" Lana said, sounding shocked. She'd picked up on what Lex had, too.

Clark gave her a half-shrug as he straightened. "Sort of," he said. "Not really." He looked over at her, then moved his focus to Lex, like he was trying to figure something out. "They're not psychotic; they're okay," he was told by Clark in all seriousness.

Lex had to stifle a hysterical laugh, because that was the Clark Kent seal of approval, all right: not psychotic.

Lois _did_ start to laugh, while Lana clenched and unclenched her fists on the cushions at her side next to him.

 _Oh,_ Lex thought with growing disquiet once Lana's reaction registered with him. He belatedly remembered hearing well after the fact that Lana had gone looking for Clark in Metropolis, and what sorts of clubbing that she'd found him doing, and how he'd broken her cellphone and snubbed her while doing it. How he'd turned his back on her and just left her there. And how high Clark had purportedly been at the time.

And Lex could very well draw what conclusions Lana was probably coming to, considering the circumstances.

"You know all of them," Lana repeated again, in descending tones.

Clark blinked at her, and tilted his head slightly.

He glanced over at Lex.

He looked back at Lana.

Then his eyes seemed to flash for a moment.

And he got the slightest of smiles.

"Uh huh," he said, tilting his head back level and crossing his arms casually. "I know them."

"You used to hang out with them," Lana slowly drew out.

Lex froze in place, because he knew full well where this was going. He had, in fact, had this very same thing happen to him the very night before.

He sat there and watched Clark glance over at him again, all bright-eyed mischief now -- _oh shit_ \-- then drop an elbow over the back of the cushioned chair Chloe was sitting in and lean against it, all easy and smooth grace. He watched Clark adopt a grin.

_Oh. Oh, you utter **bastard**. Don't you dare--!!_

"Yes," Clark said to Lana, while looking directly at Lex.

"You _are_ bisexual!" Lana accused of him.

Lex swore he could _feel_ his blood pressure go up. _So help me god, Clark Kent, I am going to--_

"Yup!" said Clark, with a wide grin -- and another quick, surreptitious glance at him -- before turning back to Lana. "You've got me." He threw his hands up in the air. "The jig is up! Me and Lex, we're **totally** bisexual," he deadpanned, slowly lowering his hands again, and Lex sucked in a breath.

 _\--love you forever, you brilliant, brilliant fool,_ Lex thought, because if there was one thing Clark couldn't do, it was _lie worth a damn_ , and there was **no way** Lana could _possibly_ mistake _that_ for **anything** but the worse sort of bald-faced-- _**completely insane**_ \--

...

...why was she glaring at Clark like that?

"You--" Lana stuttered. " _You--!!_ "

"And that one time that I kissed him really wasn't all that bad, either," Clark ended, smugly.

Lex stared at him blankly, because _what the who now?!_

It took Lex a moment to scour his brain before he remembered the CPR -- the first time that they'd ever met.

" _\--That doesn't count!_ " Lex blurted out, rocking back on the couch, outraged at the very thought.

\--and it wasn't until after he'd had three women swivel their heads towards him in tandem that he remembered _why_ he was currently finishing off his ninth cup of coffee that day. Shit. He should have been more careful in accounting for his long-term fatigue and sleep-deprivation, even on a nightly regimen of sleeping pills and day-long intake of caffeine.

He slammed his fool mouth shut.

Dammitall, why had he let Lana drag him along into this in the first place? He had _known_ this was a bad idea!

Clark, meanwhile, was practically glowing with suppressed laughter, and Lex hated him so very, _very_ much, right now.

" _You did **WHAT?!?!**_ " Lana demanded of him, and Lex barely managed to suppress a wince. ...At least, he hoped he had.

Chloe seemed to blink, then shake herself for a moment then.

"--Uh, no, actually Lana, that really _doesn't_ count," Chloe sighed, clearly wishing she wasn't the voice of reason just then, if it meant defending a Luthor, and Lex could really hardly blame her, almost. The whole situation was just ridiculous, and Clark's presence was **not** making it any better.

But he couldn't help but think that it was a small relief that at least one of the three women here actually knew what Clark was referring to and wasn't about to skewer him for it.

_...Damn. I'm going to have to take her back off of my shit list again for this, aren't I..._

Not to mention that it was completely hypocritical for Lana to be angry at him about the possibility of the two of them having 'kissed' when she'd _just_ been campaigning for that very thing to occur earlier this morning, for heaven's sake!

Lex aimed a deadly glare Clark's way for a good few seconds or so, but Clark seemed completely unconcerned to have garnered both his wrath and his ire, so he stopped. It was just wasted on him.

Both he (and, oddly, Clark also) stayed well out of the ensuing... 'spirited discussion'.

After a good while, Lex's phone buzzed at him again, and he stifled a sigh, moved his now-empty cup to the coffee table, and discreetly slid off of the couch, leaving the three ladies to their continuing bickering over whether CPR counted as a kiss or not, among other things.

Clark followed him over as he opened the door, and stood there like a lump as Lex pulled out his wallet and tipped the delivery man who was standing there waiting with three bags of food.

He considered smashing Clark in the face with some of the contents, but settled for handed off two of the bags to him instead. Clark frowned down at what he was holding as the delivery man all-but-fled shortly thereafter, having looked more and more uncomfortable in the face of the noise emanating from the apartment behind them.

"When the heck did you order takeout?" Clark asked him under his breath, and Lex bristled at hearing the accusation in his tone.

"Earlier. I had a feeling that this would take awhile," Lex told Clark quietly and choppily. At the time, he'd thought he might owe Clark an apology in food for what his girlfriend was about to put him through on Lex's behalf. Such optimism.

He shifted his hold on the third bag and grabbed the other two away from Clark abruptly, to set them all down on the table next to the door.

Clark made a slight face as Lex started sorting through the bags and rearranging their contents.

"You can pay me for your share, by the way," Lex said angrily, as a jab at Clark's own jab earlier that morning about _payment_ for food and, further, recompense for Clark's jerkiness not one minute ago in solidifying the whole 'bisexual' thing firmly in Lana's mind. Because, quite frankly, he bet Clark didn't have the money on him to pay for it, and at this point he'd truly enjoy eating a solid meal in front of Clark without sharing, even if it was a petty thing to do.

But Clark just shrugged, opened up his wallet, and pulled out a twenty.

Then he glanced through the contents of the bags again as Lex finished sorting Clark's share out solo, and pulled out another ten and five.

Lex turned and held onto the bulging paper bag, not really wanting to hand it over. He eyed the bills being presented to him with no small disdain and had to admit it was the proper amount, if not a little extra. _Damn it._

Clark rolled his eyes and slapped the money into Lex's hand, then took the bag from him.

Lex let it go and glanced over at the three women, who were still arguing and only getting louder by the minute.

"This is all your fault!" he accused Clark under his breath, as he pulled his own order out of the bags, finishing his sort-through to retrieve his own order.

"Hey, I tried the truth first, and that wasn't working," Clark said lowly, then pointed out, "At least _Lois_ doesn't think I'm bisexual anymore."

Lex frowned at Clark, but glanced over his shoulder at them, and listened a bit more intently, for his part. And, with further attention paid, he suddenly realized that, from the background of what Lane was saying at present, not only had she recognized Clark's lie for what it was, she now seemed far more on the fence about Lex being bisexual than she had been before, as well.

 _...Great._ Now he probably couldn't hate Clark nearly as much as he deserved for that stunt he'd just pulled, either.

And, god help him, how bad was it, that he was finding himself allied once again with one lying, accusatory, thoroughly-untrustworthy Clark Kent?

Lex grabbed up his bag and opened the door again.

Clark grabbed the corner of the door and pushed it back, holding it too far closed for Lex to move through.

Lex struggled back-and-forth in a tug of war with him for control of the door for a bit than he should have, before he finally had to admit to himself that he wasn't getting anywhere trying to do things this way.

Looking up at Clark's long stare that clearly communicated, _Oh no, if they're making me stay, you stay too_ , Lex said blandly, "How long do you think it'll take for them to notice we're gone?"

Clark screwed up his face a bit, and his resolve seemed to waver.

Lex put a hand on Clark's shoulder and shoved it gently backward.

Clark's arm dropped away, and so did his hold.

Lex pulled the door open again and went, and Clark slipped out, following.

It was a temporary alliance, at best, but it would have to do.

He quietly closed the door behind them.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made some minor edits to Chapter 2, mostly just to improve the flow/readability of the text. No big.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke up with his left elbow over the back of the couch he was sitting on, and Clark's head tucked in under his shoulder.

Lex blinked and straightened slightly in place, then rubbed at his face with his right hand.

Clark stirred at his side, then settled again, murmuring.

_Well, this is somewhat familiar,_ Lex thought blearily, craning his head around to stare down at Clark's slumbering frame. ...A very old sort of familiar, actually. One which he hadn't been subjected to in quite awhile, because when was the last time that he'd been this relaxed around Clark, anyway? _...Or, better-put, when was the last time I haven't been accused, scolded, or reprimanded by Clark for all of the various and sundry things that I did or didn't do that needed to be done?_

Lex tilted his head slightly to his right and dropped his gaze, and noted how Clark was barely holding the box of food in his hand where it was resting on the couch. Then he glanced down at the carton held between his own legs with the chopsticks rudely stuck in, and he shook his head once with a rueful smile. Apparently they'd both been too tired to stay awake down in the main area of the Talon, especially after it had become so quiet downstairs once it had closed for the night and the lights had been turned down low. Fatigue had won out even with that much halfway-decent Chinese food spread out so enticingly across the low table before them. Just like a night at the mansion in the thrice-damned-library, before they'd had their final falling-out and Clark had started haunting them there, and then stopped that, too.

_Familiar not in location, but in the generalities, at least,_ Lex thought as he lifted the carton out of his lap, before carefully stretching in place.

Lex tilted his head back and looked up at three sets of accusing eyes.

...Well, maybe not this part, either.

_Oh, hello ladies. Is there a problem?_ Lex communicated through sleepy eyes and a devil-may-care raised-eyebrow expression.

Lana crossed her arms at him.

Lex sighed slightly, then set his chinese to the side, raised his right hand and flicked Clark's forehead with a finger.

Clark stirred slightly.

"Clark, wake up," Lex said lowly, poking him in the forehead more firmly this time.

Clark slowly blinked open his eyes, and Lex watched him blink slowly, once, twice, then seem to wake up fully.

He pulled his arm back slightly as Clark uncurled himself and sat up, blinking. He watched Clark rubbed at his right eye with the back of his hand while stifling a yawn, other hand still absently half-curled around his own box of food.

Lex tried not to laugh at the couch-head Clark had gained, and he flicked the fingers of his left hand through it to correct the worst of it as Clark looked down at his empty box, grimaced, and leaned forward to toss it back onto the table and snatch up another one of his half-finished containers of Kung Pow chicken, one which actually had his disposable chopsticks still stuck therein. Clark didn't complain about the hair-rearranging, but then, Clark had never seemed to notice whenever Lex had done it before, either.

"Feeling better?" Lane asked dryly, as Clark sat back with his latest carton of Chinese.

"After food and sleep? Yeah," Clark admitted without shame. "Gonna have a lot to catch up on tomorrow though," he said to Lane, with a 'gee, thanks for that' sarcastic undertone, before continuing to shove more food in his mouth, like the bottomless pit he usually resembled when it came to mealtimes and edibles placed in front of him.

"Your order is still upstairs by the front door," Lex told Lana. "I didn't know what you might like, Lois, so I had the restaurant pick at random," he informed Lane, "and I wasn't expecting you at all," he said to Sullivan.

"I've got my own dinner waiting for me upstairs, thanks," Chloe told him without quite the usual level of snark.

"Geez, Chloe, I can share -- who turns down _free Chinese?_ " Lane told her, scandalized, before making a beeline back for upstairs.

"The one in the red lidded container!" Chloe called after her.

"Where my takeout is is not the point," Lana told him, continuing to stand there and frown -- if not outright glare -- down at he and Clark both.

Lex responded to this by reaching forward and picking up an unopened box of Moo Shu pork, and then proceeding to retrieve his own set of chopsticks from the nearly-empty box next to him. He made it a point to leave it there and not move it out of the way, in a somewhat-uninviting fashion. If Lana wanted to move it out of the way and sit down next to him, she could do that herself -- when she was planning on presenting a united front with him against all of this idiocy, and not one second before.

Lois was back soon enough with the rest of the food, as Chloe dragged over a few chairs to the other side of the table. She set down the bag and a steaming tupperware container of some kind of pasta for Chloe, while giving her cousin a look.

Chloe happily took up her own dinner as Lois sat down next to her and started unpacking the third bag of takeout. Lana finally sat down in the chair Chloe had dragged over for her in a huff, after a pointed look from Chloe.

Lex had been looking forward to being about to enjoy some long-overdue silence from the women when Lois glanced up, got a funny look, and piped up, "Hey, I didn't know you were left-handed."

"Well, I am," Lex informed her not unkindly, glancing up at her momentarily, then realized that she hadn't been talking to him.

He followed her gaze over to Clark, who was sitting there, eating clumps of white rice out of a takeout container while holding his chopsticks left-handed.

"Not you," Lois made clear to all and sundry, pursing her lips at Clark.

Clark looked up at her, then looked down. He looked up again.

"Aren't you right-handed?" Lane asked him.

"Yes," said Clark, not seeing the incongruity at all and clearly wondering what he was doing wrong.

Lois looked at him, then pointedly looked down at his hands.

Clark got a slight frown and looked down at his own hands again. It wasn't until he looked up at Lois again, who was also right-handed, and noticed how she was holding _her_ chopsticks, that he finally seemed to get it. Sort of.

Because his response to Lois' needling was to stick his chopsticks in his rice left-handed, transferred his hold on the container from his right to his left hand, and then pick up his chopsticks again in his right hand.

He fiddled with them for a few seconds, got the right hold, and dug back in again, eating like an expert, like that was what he'd been doing all along.

It took Lex a moment.

And then he had to mentally shake himself out of it, because he knew full well that he had better things to do than to let himself get back in the habit of obsessing over one Clark Kent, one who was apparently far more ambidextrous in practice than in theory and...

_\--no!_ No obsessing over Kent weirdness, dammit!

...except that one Lois Lane apparently had never gotten that memo, because _her_ response to Clark's little corner of insanity was a thoroughly exasperated: "Smallville, why the heck were you using your left hand?"

"Because that was how I thought you were supposed to do it," Clark replied promptly, before deftly picking up another chunk of rice and eating it.

It was about that point that it dawned on Lex what had happened, because...

"--Seriously? Who taught you how to use chopsticks?" Lois asked him.

"Lex," Clark said, and at the time Lex had taught Clark, it really hadn't registered that Clark had been copying him using his non-dominant hand, but thinking back on it now...

And now Lois was staring at him.

Lex stifled yet another sigh. "How many times have you seen the Kents order takeout?" he asked her rhetorically.

Lois opened her mouth to respond, then hesitated as she stopped and thought about it, and Lex took the opportunity to point his chopsticks at her rudely and declare, " _Hah!_ "

Lois looked startled.

" _Clearly_ the Kents must have ordered takeout frequently, because you had to stop and think about it," Lex told her smoothly, as he got back to eating his moo shu pork, and Clark started snickering into his rice.

To her credit, it only took her a moment before she responded with a somewhat-angry, "Hey!!"

Chloe was frowning at them in confusion, and Clark told her as an aside with a twisted smile, "You missed that part earlier."

"Oh, shut, it Smallville," Lois grumbled.

Clark shook his head at her. "It's okay," Clark told her. "I get it now," and to Lex's growing horror he continued with, "Pausing means you think I'm lying; not pausing means you think I'm not." With this pronouncement made, he looked up at the girls and said, straight-faced and without pause, "I'm straight. Lex is straight. Chloe hates deadlines, Lois hates high heels, and Lana hates pink."

_Oh shit,_ thought Lex, because Chloe loved reporting, Lane collected shoes like they were going out of style, and Lana had had a wardrobe _full_ of pink since he'd known her. (He was still having fights over the benefits of expanding her color range, off and on.)

Damnit, if the end result of this was that Clark had learned how to lie effectively -- _and then screw him over with it_ \-- Lex swore to god somebody was going to end up **shot** \--

"Hey, I can't work without deadlines--!" "Well, if they'd just make the shoes fit right--!" "It's a good color on me, I can't just avoid wearing it--!"

And then the girls all stopped talking at once and looked at each other.

Lex turned and stared at Clark in utter amazement because _oh my god_ , had Clark _really_ just...?

Clark had on a small, small smile that he was hiding from the girls by ducking his head down over his knees and all-but-shoving his nose into his rice container -- except Lex was sitting right next to him and could still see just the edges of it.

...yes. Yes, he had.

_Huh,_ thought Lex as he mused over the small cacophony of chaos Clark had just created right in front of them for a second or two, and all by sharing a handful of simple and unvarnished truths.

It occured to Lex to wonder if maybe there was a reason Clark didn't tell the truth all that often.

Hell, Clark had just about admitted that upstairs, hadn't he? He'd told the truth, and it hadn't worked, so then he'd lied, and...

_Damnit._ Damnit, damnit, damnit. _He was doing it again._ He was _not_ going to go from obsessing over the alien black box to moving three steps in reverse and falling back into old habits of obsessing over Clark Kent!

"Okay, okay," Clark said, raising his head again and smiling self-deprecatingly at all and sundry. "Sorry. I was wrong about the stuff about you guys," he pretty much lied flat-out, **badly** , even though it was obvious that he'd been right before, and not lying at all.

"Oh, Smallville," Lane said, cracking her knuckles like she was about to call him out on it. "Now that's just dirty pool!" she accused of him.

Clark glanced up at her and gave her a look that bespoke of pure innocence.

Didn't fool a one of them.

(Thank god.)

...Why was Clark still smiling?

"You like monster truck rallies over roses," Clark said with a straight face to her.

"Stop that."

"Your favorite color is black--"

"Is not."

"--but only for leather and chocolates."

"Shut up!" Lois said, tossing a wadded-up napkin at him, as she bit down on her lip.

"You never let anybody look at your iPod playlists for a _rea_ son," Clark said with the beginnings of a twisted, almost evil smile, before taking another bite of rice from his carton. He didn't take his eyes off her as he did so.

" _You_ hid that silly old nightlight in the attic when I found out about it, and thought I wouldn't find it again!" Lois shot back with a smirk, as she dug around in her carton of beef and broccoli with a fork.

Clark's eyes narrowed. " _You_ get lost every time you go out jogging and take a right turn onto Oak Street, and then you try and pretend that you meant to do it on purpose after you finally make it back to civilization hours later."

With half-an-ear, Lex listened to this banter go on next to him for about a minute or so, before his chopsticks paused in midair as the penny finally dropped.

He glanced sideways at Clark and Lois as they went at it with each other, and at the small smiles on their faces as they did it.

He looked at Chloe, and noticed her tired, half-sighing reaction as she watched them.

_Well, hell,_ he thought, and wondered if Oliver knew it, too.

He glanced over at Lana, and realized that _she_ was still glancing surreptitiously between him and Clark... and how clear it was that she hadn't picked up on any of the implications of what was going on between Clark and Lois at all.

_Ah,_ thought Lex, with a deep and profound mental sigh. And with that, he decided to call it a night.

Lex took in a slow, cleansing breath, and let it out again, then dropped his near-empty takeout container on the table in front of him and stood up.

He walked around the edge of the table and held out a hand for Lana, who frowned up at him slightly, but still discarded her carton, took his hand, and stood with him.

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" Lane called after him almost cheerily as he led Lana back up to the apartment, and Lex quietly huffed out a breath in consternation, then shook his head. _Lane._

"Lex--" Lana began, but he shot her a sideways look full of knowing, followed by a small smile of no small smugness, and she stopped on her own at the top landing with more than a little surprise.

He slipped back inside the apartment and retrieved Lana's coat. When she trailed in after him, he played the gentleman and helped her put her coat on, then took her by the arm and patted her hand. And, as he led her out of the Talon, he ducked his head down and, under his breath, asked of her, "Do you know why I have been taking this morning's argument, and the one just now, with such grace?"

Lana glanced up at him, eyes narrowing slightly.

Lex licked his lips, then bent down a little lower. "It's because I realized that you were _jealous_ ," he whispered, right into her ear.

Because if Lana had been so blinded by that worry to not even see what was going on right in front of her clear as day, not obsessed enough with _Clark_ to pick up on Clark's unacted-upon attraction to Lane -- instead too worried about losing _Lex_ \-- to **Clark** , of all people -- ...that meant that Lex's victory was now assured. He _had_ her, well and truly _had_ her. **Finally.**

He pulled away from her to look into her eyes, just in time to see the high color rise on her cheeks.

He let himself take on a slow, truly wicked smile, and leaned towards her again. "It makes me wonder," he began, soft and low. "Just how you would react if I actually _was_ serious about Clark, about being attracted to him."

And, god help him, _the look on Lana's face right now_. He was surely going to go to hell for causing it. He was almost certainly going to burn in the ninth ring of hell for _enjoying_ it.

But it was so worth it.

For the way she grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him hard and hungry, right out in the middle of the street, frustrated and possessive and obsessed with nobody but him?

He'd do it again.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, inbetween the last chapter and this one, I skipped ahead in the timeline a few episodes, and then [6x13 Crimson](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Crimson/) happened. Is happening. This is where we are at now. ...Er, you get the idea ^_^;;
> 
> Since it's been a long time since the show aired, and I don't want anybody else to get lost (sorry about that), here's the recap you may need from the start of the episode: at a Valentine's Day party at the Talon, Lois tries a red-K infected lipstick on that makes her fall madly in love with the first person she sees -- Clark. (Think Love Potion No.9.) Then she stalks Clark, corners him and kisses him, and the kiss transfers enough red-K that Clark might as well [have on the ring from Red](http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Red/) from that point on. Unsurprisingly, things go downhill from there ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Valentine's Day, and Lex was engaged, and celebrating his engagement.

...And, yes, he'd had to invite his father (ah, the obligations of family...) but Mrs. Kent was there, too (-- as his date? --) to even it out and keep him in line, so no harm, no foul.

And yes, Lana was pregnant, and yes, Lex was worried about the possibility of miscarriage... or lack of miscarriage, considering his mood and Lana's mood and the current alignment of the stars at any particular hour of the day. There were too many unanswered questions -- was it at all possible that the baby was going to be partially-alien? Had Zod's and/or Fine's meddlings had any permanent effects on his physiology that might not only still be affecting him, directly or indirectly, but might further be transferred down to any of his progeny? Lana had told him how Zod-in-Lex had meant to use her as a breeding mare for a new Kryptonian race, after all, so it wasn't a thought that could be immediately discarded, relegated back to the realm of completely-ephemeral nighttime horrors.

If not, then there were still a slew of other possible issues, up to and including the fact that to-date nearly every child born of two parents that had been in town during either of the meteor shower events seemed to be born with some sort of _active_ meteor power, however great or small, regardless of the non-latent ability of their parents, or lack thereof. Lex himself would not find issue with his own child exhibiting some sort of meteor power -- frankly, he might be more than a little relieved to know that they could competently defend themselves if circumstances dictated it -- but that didn't mean he had any idea what to do if his child ending up being ostracized for that reason, or developed serious mental instabilities because of it...

Not that any of these things were anything close to what it would take to scare him off. He would do right by her, of course -- no need for a shotgun to force the wedding to take place. And all of these things could be handled one at a time, in their own time. His main worry at-present was actually a simple one: he would have liked to have been able to assure Lana that he was wanting to do more than just 'right by her' in marrying her, but surely she would see that in time. And yes, they'd had their ups and downs, but what relationship didn't? They'd been working through things slowly, and Lex had faith that eventually everything _would_ be all right between them.

...Now, if only the Green Arrow and his damn terrorist compatriots would stop blowing up his adjunct Level 33.1 support facilities, he could finish putting things in place to secure the planet against current and future alien invaders, and life would be just about perfect. He was still tracking several of the most recent threats, despite a disturbing number of them having vanished into thin air on him as time progressed. He needed to be ready, with all defenses firmly entrenched, before the aliens finished regrouping and marshalled all their very deadly forces together against the rest of the human race.

Lex shook himself. Matters of alien war aside -- tonight was supposed to be a happy occasion. So what if Lana didn't want to announce her pregnancy? She had still said yes. She had said she wasn't having second thoughts about marrying him, and that she wasn't just doing it because she was pregnant with his child. And she was here, with him, ready to commit to spending the rest of her life with him, after all, wasn't she?

He looked at himself in the mirror and forced a smile until he meant it.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

~*~*~*~*~*~

And then goddamn Clark Kent crashed the party, Lois Lane in tow, dressed like the punk children they were, and proceeded to break everything in half by all-but-lying with the truth, just as he had weeks ago at the Talon when he'd first thought that Lana might be high for suggesting what she had about his sexuality.

\--Except that this time there were no lies interspercing the truths, Clark was the one who was high (...along with Lane? what the hell?) and Lex damn well knew better than to confront him directly when he was like this, but Martha wasn't stepping up to stop him, and Lex _couldn't_ let this continue.

"Clark, I think you've done enough damage. Why don't you leave?" Lex said firmly, though gritted teeth, approaching him as close as he dared without a weapon at-hand.

Except-- "I'm not done yet!" Clark declared. "Besides, Lex, I haven't given you my gift yet." Lex looked on angrily as Clark grabbed up a glass of champagne from the table. "Congratulations on sealing the deal."

And when Clark pulled a baby rattle out of his black leather jacket and held it up, Lex's heart just about stopped. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of Clark in weeks, not after declaring Lana's pregnancy to him -- and he had known he shouldn't have done it in such an uncouth manner, but the way Clark had **baited** him, in his own house no less -- it had gotten ugly and he'd thought _fuck it_ and tossed the knowledge in Clark's face without a second's hesitation.

No, he hadn't seen Clark -- barely in passing in town between the ambush at the Talon and that showdown in the library, and not once since then -- not after making sure that Clark wouldn't say yes to Lana if she went running back to him, knowing that Clark _wouldn't_ get in the way, wouldn't stand between them ever again, not once he knew that Lana was carrying Lex's child--

\--except that was exactly what he was doing right now, driving a wedge between them in the very worst way by declaring out in the open, in front of absolutely everyone: "To baby Luthor, the _real_ reason that Lana's marrying you."

Clark tossed the rattle at him and Lex caught it numbly; he couldn't do much else. He watched Clark turn and raise the glass to Lana in a parody of a toast, saw the look Lana gave Clark for it, and that was just too much.

He dropped the rattle on the table and rushed Clark.

Not a second later he was on the floor in the middle of a pool of broken glass and furniture, Lana next to him, crying out his name, and Lex was left looking up dazedly at Clark as he loomed overhead, wondering what the hell had just happened...

"How dare you?" Lana retorted, standing up to Clark in his drugged-high madness.

"C'mon, Lana, if no one else in this room is gonna save you from Lex, then I will," Clark told her.

And it was Lex's worst nightmare, watching from the floor and struggling to try and get his feet under him and upright as Clark grabbed Lana by the arm and hauled her away from him.

He barely managed more than collapsing forward, wind still knocked out of him, doubled-over and hurting like hell, could only watch, powerless, as Clark forcibly started to drag Lana off. He could only look on as Lois got in between Clark and the door, and said, "I don't think so. Lana is your past. I'm your future."

He watched as Clark said, smugly, "This is the present."

And then Lex watched Clark just... pause.

And look over at a struggling Lana.

And then look down at him.

And get a slow grin.

And say, "And there's no time like the present," and toss Lana backwards into Lane like she weighed nothing. Meant nothing.

The girls both went down onto the hardwood floor, and Lex barely had a second to panic, struggling to his knees, before Clark was hauling him upright and telling him, "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure the baby's fine. Lois is squishy in all the right places."

"Lana--" Lex wheezed out, but she'd landed back-first, and seemed to be all right, thank god.

He tried to stagger forward, but Clark hauled him back against his chest, and Lex stumbled straight into him.

"Say, Lex," Clark asked him casually, "Did you and Lana ever finally work out whether or not we were bisexual for each other?"

Lex felt himself pale as he stared up at Clark in shock. At a Clark who was grinning down at him and holding him around the waist almost _possessively_ , like--

But before he could even think to protest, he had the breath knocked out of him all over again in a rush as Clark tossed him up over a shoulder and carted him off.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Chapter 6

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex finally had the presence of mind to start trying to figure out how the hell to get away from Clark.

...around the time when Clark dumped him into the front seat of one of his convertibles, which put a halt to that real quick. Then Clark shoved him upright hard enough to knock the wind out of him _again_. And then seatbelted him in.

By the time Lex's head had stopped spinning -- _**again**_ \-- and he was able to stop wheezing and start struggling with the seatbelt to try and get loose, Clark was already in the driver's seat. And Clark's response to Lex's escape efforts was to slap Lex's hands away from the button release hard enough that Lex's hands went numb.

Lex stifled a yelp; in the meantime, Clark completely ignored his verbalized protest and started the engine.

"You--" was all Lex got out before he was slammed backwards into his seat by the sudden acceleration.

The car shot out of the garage, and Lex winced hard at the night air streaming over them -- cold, frigid February Kansas winter air -- then started to shiver uncontrollably, because couldn't Clark at least have taken one of the fucking convertibles _with_ a top?

Lex glanced over at the speedometer on the dash, then out the window, and given the speed they were travelling at, down the lane and... _skidding_ around the corner of the gate -- which _jerked_ him **hard** against the side of his seatbelt, locking it in place for a long moment -- before they accelerated abruptly again, well on the way to the highway within seconds, all Lex was really capable of now was to sit in his seat and stay still. He really didn't need Clark to tell him, when he glanced down at the door handle, "I wouldn't."

Lex gritted his teeth.

"C'mon Lex," Clark said with a quick flash of a grin at him, "Just sit back and enjoy the ride!"

"It's fucking freezing out!" Lex spat out as he continued to shiver under the wind's assault, which only got worse as they hit the open road. "We're in a goddamn convertible, and I don't even have a coat!"

"Hm?" Clark said, glancing over at him. "So?"

Lex paused, then turned his head stiffly and stared at him incredulously. He realized that, amazingly enough, Clark didn't look the least damn bit cold.

He wasn't wearing his seatbelt, either.

Clark stared back at him, tilting his head like he thought Lex must be joking, or just needling him for the hell of it. He blinked once, then rolled his eyes at Lex.

"Fine, whatever," he said, and leaned forward in his seat.

As Clark pushed his arms behind his back and twisted and turned in place, Lex nearly had a heart attack coupled with a rather vivid vision of swerving off the road and the resulting inevitable conclusion to the ride. Yet Clark completed the maneuver successfully -- stripping off his leather jacket and pretty much throwing it at him -- while, miraculously, the car didn't so much as swerve as he did it. (Thank god, because they were going at least 120 miles-per-hour now -- the needle was buried far enough to the right that Lex could not see the reading anymore from the passenger's side seat -- and ending up in a car accident to top off the day would just be putting the icing on the cake as it were, the way tonight was turning out.)

Lex caught Clark's jacket none too deftly with fingers that had started to regain feeling in them, only to begin to go a bit numb from something other than assault-by-Clark, and he watched Clark watch him carefully as he slowly undid his seatbelt and slid the jacket on.

Then Lex pulled it in a little more closely about him, and couldn't really help but do so. Because it was actually much heavier than it looked, and pretty warm. Still warm from Clark's body heat.

Lex moved his eyes up slowly to Clark, who was messing with the dials on the dashboard now, and Lex blinked as the heat came on. --Not entirely helpful, given the frigid February night air still streaming continuously over the windshield and into his face, but a little better, at least.

Clark glanced over, then gave Lex an exasperated look, before reaching over and pulling Lex's undone seatbelt across his chest to click it back into place, effectively trapping him in the seat again. ...Well, beyond what their current travelling speed already rather strongly suggested would be a very, _very_ bad idea to attempt, anyway.

Lex put up with Clark's latest bit of manhandling, then hunkered down a little in his seat to get his forehead and skull just that much further down and out of the worst of the windchill.

He eyed Clark, who was acting a lot more soberly now than he had been at the mansion, when he'd been acting out in front of an audience.

He'd really not expected this level of... care... from Clark. He had two experiences to go by, with Clark not being entirely in his right mind. One had involved him being sky-high on who-knew-what. The other had reportedly involved a splinter of silver meteor rock, and left Clark not simply without restraint, but delusional and paranoid enough to believe that restraint wasn't the smart option, if it had been an option at all.

The second experience had left Lex with the full understanding of exactly how much Clark tended to hold back with him, with _everyone_. Chloe might've talked a good game about temporary abilities, but Lex had seen too much before this to dismiss what had happened, believing in such a simple explanation -- especially when the rock had vanished from his possession, and this after Lana had entrusted it to him. Lex still remembered quite clearly an experience from years before, one that had involved Clark, and Pete, and Clark "taking Pete's side". An experience in which Clark had, with little fanfare and no warning, grabbed Lex and bodily slammed him into the wall next to his fireplace so hard that Lex had completely lost consciousness. It had been abrupt, and terrifying, and despite Clark's numerous apologies afterwards for having to _pretend_ he was angry with Lex, an act supposedly necessary in order to get the drop on Pete, Lex had had nightmares about that very thing happening in truth, every night for a solid month.

Similarly less-than-restrained about performing physical violence at the time of his silver-meteor-rock-induced paranoid delusions, Clark had nearly broken Lex's wrist, forcing rather than asking Lex to drop the gun he'd picked up from his downed security guard, who Clark had attacked just prior. He hadn't stopped when Lex had asked him to stop; he hadn't listened when Lex had tried to explain. No, Clark hadn't even let Lex do that much, and what little Lex _had_ managed to say -- before Clark overrode him -- had only seemed to push Clark to actions more extreme than ever before: Clark had accused Lex of stealing Lana from him, Clark had said he _wanted_ to hurt Lex, and then Clark had launched Lex _the full length of the hallway_. Lex had felt his body hit the floor and slide right before he'd slammed into something hard; he'd blacked out even before he'd hit the far wall.

And while he'd lain there unconscious and insensate under a windowpane of glass, in a heap of broken wood that had once been a piece of furniture, Clark had proceeded to move on to Lana next. Lana, who had still been Clark's girlfriend at the time. Clark had nearly strangled her to death for what he'd believed had happened, what he'd to all appearances considered the worst of betrayals: choosing Lex over Clark.

And, when all was said and done, Lex had learned his lessons well. Clark was dangerous when provoked. Bluff or otherwise, the threat of grievous bodily harm did not curtail Clark's actions in the least; if anything, it provoked him, _and Clark was dangerous when provoked_.

Even armed with a gun, Lex had been nothing but a rag doll to be tossed and thrown about.

So, no, Clark wasn't delusional now, he was "just" unrestrained -- but he didn't _need_ to be delusional for Lex to prompt such similar action this time: Lex had _actually_ stolen Lana from him, now. By attacking Clark verbally in the car as he had, Lex had fully expected Clark to pull the vehicle over and then proceed to drag him out of the car and pound him into the ground with that noted and thoroughly-unforgettable lack of restraint.

But at least he would have had to stop the car to do it.

Further, Lex assumed that he would have had _some_ small chance of surviving the beating, or maybe he might've even managed to hit the ground running and get away before Clark realized what was happening -- possibly largely unscathed, in a perfect world. Following that, Lex had thought it likely that Clark would then go after Lana next, but with the previous warning of Clark's earlier actions at the mansion, Lana would already be wary and firmly ensconced at the mansion within a phalanax of armed guards. Regardless of what happened to him, Lana would be safe.

...But that hadn't happened.

Instead, Clark had...

And Lex couldn't help but compare Clark's actions now with one dizzying time, so many years ago, when he'd been barged in on in his library, with Clark wanting to leave town and take Lex along for the ride ...and another, later time he'd heard secondhand about Clark hitting a high, making out with _Chloe_ of all people in the middle of the Talon in front of all and sundry, putting on a show for Lana and the rest of the town.

Lex mused over this quietly, because... leaving out their mutual falling out after an almost ritualistic exchanging of blows, and setting aside the rending of their relationship which _should_ have had more of an impact on Clark's behavior in the interim...

...the mansion was the Talon, throwing everything he could be in Lana's face, a performance for all and a statement. And the car was the library, a performance for one and an enticement, trying to pull Lex in with the promise of... himself? And everything he was?

This wasn't something new. This was something... old?

And as the scenery whipped by, Lex came to yet another startling realization.

Because Clark took yet another unexpected turn -- literally. _Away_ from the city.

"...We're not headed for Metropolis?"

Clark snorted. "Hell, no. Not _Metropolis_ , not _Small_ ville." He glanced over at Lex and got a lazy smile. "Smallville is just... too small, for either of us anymore. And Metropolis, well," Clark shook his head and hissed out a breath. "I've done Metropolis. I'm done with it. --We've got the whole world out there, Lex!" he declared grandly, sweeping out an arm at the scenery with a widening grin. "Why settle?"

"Where, then?" Lex asked quietly, trying not to shiver.

"Wherever we want," Clark told him, and his grin faded as he glanced over at Lex. "Wherever _**I**_ want," he told Lex more soberly.

Lex clenched and unclenched his jaw.

"There's no audience out here," Lex told him quietly. "It's just you and me. So do us both a favor and just tell me what you want."

"What I want?" Clark laughed. "What do I want." He looked forward out the windshield, actually spent a moment and seemed to consider this. Then Clark smiled.

"-- _ **Everything**_ ," Clark told him, with flashing eyes.

Lex shivered.

"What do you want?" he was asked in return.

"What do I want?" Lex repeated numbly.

"Well, yeah," Clark said, leaning back in his seat and flexing his shoulders a bit, settling in. "You've always wanted everything I've ever had, and sure, I've had Lana, _but_..." He glanced over at Lex, eyes boring into him. "Is that really what you want? A farm and my ex-girlfriend and some cows? That's it?"

Lex barely restrained himself from punching Clark in the face, for sounding like he was teasing him, for--

Lex shook his head and cracked a thin, crooked smile to himself, but... " 'That's it?' " Lex said, murderously low. "Yes, Clark, _that's it_. I want a **home** , and a **family** that loves me, and a fucking future that **doesn't** involve having anybody jerk me around or telling me what to do!"

Clark glanced over at him. Stared at him.

And then started to _fucking laugh at him_.

"You don't even know what you have," Lex told him caustically, turning away from him, because he might be stuck here, with him, for the moment, but he'd be _damned_ if he'd let Clark think that that meant he'd put up with--

" **You** don't even know what _I_ have," Clark told him. "You really think I have any of that?" he was asked, in incredulous tones.

Lex's head turned back towards Clark without conscious volition. He couldn't help but stare.

"A home?" Clark repeated. "Don't have that. Lost that a long time ago. Can't even remember it."

"The farm," Lex said slowly.

"Nope," Clark said. "Not home, never really was. Not _really_."

"The Kents took you in." And this was just surreal, watching Clark shake his head at him shortly, watching as Clark kept his eye on the road, fully-serious, with not a grin in sight.

"Martha wanted a kid. Any kid. Didn't matter who, what, or from where." And then Clark got a small smirk. "I guess if you want to really split hairs," he glanced over at Lex, "you could say I lost home and a family when I killed their _real_ kid."

Lex stared at him in complete noncomprehension.

"What, you don't know about that yet?" Clark asked him with something like mock-worry, except it looked a hell of a lot more like condescension on him. "And here I thought Martha was in so deep with you Luthors already," Clark added, and his tone of voice took on an ugly, dark note as he said it.

Lex stayed silent. Frankly, he couldn't think of anything to say. Clark wasn't half-wrong about the thought of Lionel defiling Martha being a disgusting thought indeed. He wasn't about to openly agree with Clark on the matter, though, if only on principle. All he could do was look away, out the windshield, and keep his peace, as well as he could.

"That day I didn't show up at your second wedding when I was supposed to?" Clark prompted him to recall, then told him: "I didn't make it because I was busy setting off an explosion to try and get rid of something."

_...What?_

Lex slowly turned back towards Clark.

"Jon and Martha were out driving when it went off, the truck overturned, and Martha miscarried."

He glanced over at Lex again, but Lex was too shocked by his earlier statement -- because Clark never explained anything, so why was he now? what _the hell?_ \-- to really respond, let alone begin to actually parse the meaning of the words so blithely related just then.

\--Not until Clark proceeded to state, straight-out and with a casualness that belied the actual communicated content: "She was pregnant with their real kid, the one they'd always wanted. And then she wasn't. Oops."

It took Lex a moment, and then he felt both a growing rage, and a deep hole hollowing out the bottom of his stomach.

_Clark had killed... no, had in his own words **gotten rid of** \--_

He twisted his head away to stare blindly out the passenger's side window. And, with thoughts of Julian dancing in his head, "Did you ever apologize for it?" Lex heard himself remark calmly -- though how he managed it, he didn't know.

"Tried to," Clark told him. "Didn't ever really get to. See, Jonathan kicked me out first. He knew it was my fault, what had happened, and didn't ever want to see me again, didn't want me around him or his wife anymore," and Lex watched Clark sit there and fucking shrug over it. "So, no home, no family. First selfish thing I really did for myself, and look how that turned out," Clark told him. "Tried to make it so I wouldn't have to leave, and then I..." Clark smiled. "--ended up having to leave!" And then Clark _laughed_.

"By killing an unborn child," Lex said slowly, dropping his head and staring down at the backs of his white-knuckled hands pressed down against his thighs, not daring to look at him for what he might do.

"Yeah, I know," Clark agreed easily enough. "You want to know the funniest thing about it?" he prodded Lex.

"What."

"That wasn't even what I was trying to do."

Lex's eyes slowly wandered back up and over to Clark.

"I guess it almost turned out okay, though," Clark continued conversationally, as he tacked the steering wheel slightly to the left, adjusting their course. "I was so fucking turned around in the head hurting from _guilt_ ," he spat out like an insult, then rolled his eyes at himself, "that I ended up going for the first thing that would take away the pain." The corners of his mouth twitched sideways, and he slowly began to smile. "And it worked." Then lost it. "At least until they came looking for me and meant it."

"Your summer in Metropolis."

"Yeah." Clark smiled again. "Good times."

"...Jonathan kicked you out of the house for... something horrible..." Lex said slowly, and that euphemism had to be the understatement of the century. Lex was practically giving himself a tension headache, for the effort of trying not to think about it. "Something that... you didn't mean to do."

"Yup," Clark said. "And then the hypocritical bastard realized how much damage I was doing in the city and arbitrarily decided that it was _his_ responsibility to go out and find me and drag me back to that little hick town again." Clark clenched his fingers around the steering wheel and Lex heard the leather flex. "Whether I wanted to or not."

"What happened?" Lex asked, hardly believing any of what he was hearing at all, because he couldn't. Because it was utterly insane. Because Clark _had_ to be lying, didn't he? Martha had never been pregnant; that would have been all over town. He shouldn't have let himself think otherwise, shouldn't have taken any of it seriously in the first place. This was just a strange, roundabout way of pressing Lex's buttons.

...Wasn't it?

Clark shook his head. "I got tag-teamed by a bunch of idiots. First Chloe, then Lana, then Jonathan." Clark snorted. "I should've just killed him right there when I had the chance. I almost did." And then Clark's eyes narrowed and he added, more quietly, "I'm really not sure why I didn't."

"Because he's your father and you love him," Lex said quietly, closing his eyes, trying not to engage, not to think.

"He's not, and I shouldn't have," Clark told him. "He made me weak. _On purpose._ "

Lex opened his eyes and glanced over at Clark again. Clark looked more stonily _annoyed_ than incensed.

"I guess it's not like it matters, in the end, because he's dead anyway," Clark ended, with a slight huff of laughter. "The old fool."

Lex stared at him.

"So, that's home and a family, oh-for-two," Clark said, with a mock-cheerful demeanor.

"Martha still loves you," Lex said quietly. _Not that you deserve it._

" _Martha Kent_ loves 'her son'," Lex was told. " _Clark Kent_. -- **Not** me. She loves the _idea_ of me. ...Or, at least who I'm _supposed_ to be. Who she wants me to be, that I'm not. She made **that** perfectly clear the summer after Metropolis; I remember that part, at least, perfectly well," Clark told him darkly, and the accompanying laugh was just as black and twice as derisive. 

Lex felt himself pale.

"Believe me, the **only** reason why she still keeps me around is because I'm the **only** thing she's still got left. And it's not like she's not trying to change that, however she can." Clark glanced over at Lex. "I mean, you _have_ to have noticed who she keeps showing up at all your parties with, right? She'd rather spend more time with _Lionel_ -freaking-Luthor of all people, or halfway across the country, than anywhere _near_ me." Clark turned away.

"Not that I blame her," Clark said, far more calmly than the last, with an accompanying shrug. "'Clark' is a whiny little boring bastard of a son. I wouldn't want to be around him, either." Clark tilted his head and a cold smile came and left his face, as his eyes slid over to Lex again. "...So, Lex, remind me -- what's that third one again?"

Clark paused for a moment for effect, and that hole wasn't in the bottom of his stomach anymore. Now Lex could just about feel it being dug out right below his feet, and this couldn't be happening.

"Oh, right -- 'a fucking future that _doesn't_ involve having anybody jerk me around or telling me what to do!'" Clark rattled off cheerfully, gracing Lex with a wide, tooth-filled grin.

But the expression on Clark's face had no resemblence in any way to mirth.

Lex swallowed hard.

"Wrong, wrong, and wrong," Clark told him, looking out the windshield, "and I bet you were thinking of Lionel right when you said it, yeah?" Clark asked him rhetorically, because of course he had been. "You have no fucking clue, Lex," he was told, and Lex didn't even have the dubious relief of seeing a not-a-grin on Clark's face anymore. "Lionel doesn't hold a candle to my father, and that's a fact."

"Your father is dead."

"Yeah, but he lingers," Lex was told. "And believe you me, when my father tells Lionel to jump? Lionel _immediately_ jumps _as high as he possibly can_ , and **prays** that it was high enough."

"Lionel doesn't answer to Jonathan Kent," Lex said slowly.

"You're right," Clark said. "He doesn't."

Lex took one look at the look on Clark's face -- a doped-up high, shouldn't-even-be- _capable_ -of-that-low-an-affect Clark Kent -- as Clark stared **grimly** out the window at the road in front of them, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel, and Lex's blood practically froze in his veins.

And it had nothing at all to do with the wind or weather.

Lex turned away and stared out at the dark countryside, lit only by the headlights, and tried to think. But he didn't know _what_ to think. He could swear that Clark wasn't lying, but it was too surreal, too unbelievable to possibly be true.

The pieces all fit in-between the cracks, but it _couldn't_ be... it, just _couldn't_...

"What do you want from me?" Lex asked Clark quietly, almost fearing the answer.

"Mm. ...You know? I'm not sure," Clark said. "Besides just wanting you?" Clark shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Lex looked over at Clark and watched him cock his head to the side, rest it on a fist, elbow propped on the doorframe. He watched as Clark seemed to reconsider his earlier decision, as he drove them down the road at near-blinding speeds one-handed.

They traveled on down the road in silence for a bit, before Clark finally said, "I guess I wanted to hurt you and Lana, but now that seems kind of boring."

"Thanks," Lex said dryly, because he'd kind of figured that one out already, minus the... 'reasoning'.

Clark lifted his head and looked over at him. "What, would you rather that I'd brought Lana along instead?" he was asked. "I _could_ turn the car around and--"

" _\--No!_ " Lex responded immediately.

Clark sent a lopsided grin his way. "Then what are you all fired up about?" Clark asked him. "So you took her place for her, instead of her getting dragged along all-unwilling," he was told. "That makes you the suffering hero or something, instead of just a damsel in distress, right? You should be **happy** about it. You won!" Clark grinned at him, then his grin went lopsided again and he added, smugly, " _Sort_ of."

"You didn't give me much of a choice," Lex stated outright.

"So? You're here, aren't you? And it's not like you ever said 'no'."

Lex grimaced, but didn't say anything.

Though he did wonder for a moment what _would_ happen if he _did_ tell Clark 'no'.

He settled for burrowing deeper into Clark's jacket for warmth instead.

Unfortunately, it didn't escape Lex that, at the moment, he and Clark were getting along better than they had in months.

...and all it had taken was Clark kidnapping him from his own engagement party dinner, after horrendously insulting him and his fiance, among others, in front of every last one of his guests.

Lex rubbed a hand over his face, and tried hard not to think about anything in particular for awhile, because neither picking a fight with Clark nor getting himself tossed out of a moving vehicle at death-defying speeds would make for an auspicious ending to that evening's moonlight... impromptu 'joyride'.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Whew! --Hey guys, sorry for the delay. There is more coming that "just" needs editing, though I probably shouldn't make any promises about that given how long it took me to get that far with this latest bit... *eheheh* ^_^;;
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex started awake, then proceeded to frown in confusion because the car was no longer moving. It then occurred to him that that had been what had woken him up in the first place.

He had no idea when he'd fallen asleep.

"...Where are we?" he asked, as he slowly straightened and craned his neck to look around.

"Someplace," Clark told him from above, at his passenger's side door, as he reached over him and undid his seatbelt. "Not Metropolis."

"Not anywhere," Lex said quietly, as he shoved himself forward in his seat, stretched slightly in place and winced when his muscles protested the motion.

"Everyplace is somewhere," he was told by Clark, and he found himself lifted directly out of the seat, as apparently he wasn't moving fast enough for Clark's taste. Luckily, he was set down on his feet again, next to the car, before he could even begin protest the carry ...which had been for a far shorter distance than he'd expected -- or **dreaded** , rather.

Lucky because, given the mood Clark was in, protesting probably would have set Clark grinning and carting him around for an undetermined period, just to piss him off. Even though it clearly wouldn't have been on his mind before Lex's complaining, the doped-up jerk.

Unfortunately, Lex was too tired to sustain that much ire over something that hadn't -- _but likely would have_ \-- happened. He really didn't have the energy to spare.

Instead, Lex decided to expend his efforts focusing on what was, not what could have been.

And 'what was' was that they were standing out on a parking lot, next to a single-story roadside motel strip. The lot was deserted, and all the lights were off, even in the building that looked like it was meant to serve as the office. And, from the looks of the place, Lex wasn't even sure if the run down motel was just having a bad night with no customers, or if it had truly been abandoned by the owners. The road sign wasn't even lit.

"Clark..." Lex began, starting to metaphorically dig in his heels, but then he hesitated as he reassessed the current situation.

They were out in the middle of nowhere.

Clark hadn't left the keys in the ignition, so Lex couldn't make a run for it in the car, even if he knew which way to go, which he didn't.

It was deep into the night by this point and colder than blue blazes out, so Lex couldn't exactly stay away from Clark by remaining out of doors for long, even wearing Clark's surprisingly thick and warm leather jacket to help ward off the cold.

Trying to run away would just piss Clark off, and without anywhere to run **to** attempting such would be sheer folly.

...

...Well, that was somewhat depressing. Because, thinking on it, comparatively he had found himself in more tenable situations tied down to a chair with a madperson or two raving at him half-incoherently, while waving around dangerous implements in a haphazard manner. _Damn._

Not that there was a lot that Lex could do to improve things for himself at the moment, really.

So Lex trailed along after Clark, as Clark seemed to decide on the motel room nearest where they'd parked. Lex assumed this, anyway, as he watched Clark force the lock and shove the door in, all but cringing at the property damage, let alone the sheer strength that had to be backing the maneuver. Clark, showing restraint in his presence? **Hardly.**

And Lex was just going along with it, not even displaying the wherewithal to voice a token protest ...and he wasn't even really sure why.

 _Damn it,_ Lex thought. _What am I even doing here?_

Clark walked in and flicked the lightswitch on the wall by the door, and, wonders of wonders, the lights actually came on!

"Hm," said Clark, as he moved in like he owned it and surveyed the room. "Not exactly up to my usual standards, but..."

That was crazy, though, because to Lex, it looked like _heaven_. The bed was actually made up, the room wasn't full of trash, and it looked like the place had even been cleaned recently. There weren't even visible stains anywhere that he could see. Yes, everything was old, but nothing had fallen into disrepair, and it all was clearly cared for. It didn't even smell bad. Lex had seen college dorm rooms in far worse shape; he'd even slept in a few. Hell, he'd have killed for a room this size at Excelsior Prep, especially one with a separate bathroom.

And the room was **warm**.

Apparently, looks from the outside were not everything. The place was obviously still being maintained, and aired out at least occasionally. ...However, that meant it was far more likely that, sooner or later, somebody would come around and be upset at the broken lock and unpaid-for room occupancy, and Lex was certainly not looking forward to seeing how Clark would decide to handle _that_ particular conversation.

Well, it wasn't like there was much he'd be able to do about it until it happened, if it happened. Best not to think about it, when Clark wasn't in a mood to be listening to him anyway. It wouldn't do any good. It wasn't like he could make plans to be carried out later, when he already knew that none of them would work. Not until Clark starting coming off of his high and started listening to reason again.

So Lex settled for taking in a deep breath and trying to let go for the moment. Instead he focused on stepping into the room, and savoring the warmth.

Clark, for his part, came back over and shoved the door closed behind him, which Lex was fine with, given that it'd help keep all the wonderful, glorious heat from escaping the room. Lex was decidedly less than fine with what Clark did next, however, as that involved wrapping a hand around Lex's wrist and all-but-dragging him over to the bed.

"Clark--" Lex began.

"Clark-Clark- _Clark_ ," Clark parroted back meanly, as he picked Lex up like he weighed nothing -- _again_ \-- and literally dropped him onto the center of the bed. "The _name_ is **Cal** ," Lex was told.

"I--" Lex cut himself off as Clark, or 'Cal', or whatever he was calling himself now, dropped down onto the bed, and then tossed a leg and an arm over him. "You--!!" Lex squirmed away, protesting -- or he tried to.

And then Lex had the dubious pleasure of finding himself pulled up close against Clark's chest again, as they lay on the bed, face-to-face.

...Or face-to-chest, as it were, while Clark-possibly-'Cal' let out a pleased half-sigh, half-rumble and relaxed into the mattress alongside him.

Lex put up with this for a few moments as he resorted his thoughts and tried to think of an actually-plausible line of attack to get what he wanted. (--Some space would be a good start!)

Well, if Clark hadn't been lying before, he was either suffering from a split personality given the way he had been talking about 'Clark' earlier, or 'Cal' was the name that his biological father had given him. ...A father who was dead, but supposedly also controlling Lex's own father these days, somehow?

Lex mentally shook himself out of it, because _that was not the problem at hand!_

"Cal," Lex said carefully.

"Mm?"

"Why are we here?"

"I'm tired," Lex was told.

Lex frowned slightly. "How long were we on the road?"

"About four hours," Clark yawned.

Great. At the speeds they'd been travelling at, that put them at _least_ 500 miles and two states away by now, going west. Small wonder they were out in the middle of nowhere -- it was because **they were out in the middle of nowhere!**

That also meant it was around eleven o'clock at night, since he'd been abducted from the party after Clark's party-crashing around seven.

"I'm not tired; I could drive," Lex tried, and he felt more than heard the laugh that rumbled through Clark's chest.

"I don't think so," he was told. "Besides, you fell asleep in the car. You're more tired than I am."

Lex blinked, offput by the thought, because, actually, Lex hadn't felt any more tired than he usually did, these days, and... He started to wonder what it meant that he _had_ fallen asleep more easily around Clark, too. ...and hadn't suffered from any nightmares without being drugged to the teeth to suppress them. Then he banished the notion entirely.

"How long are we going to stay here?" Lex asked him, and he both heard and felt Clark let out a long sigh.

"As long as I feel like it; now shut up and let me sleep," Clark told him, not moving an inch.

"Shouldn't we turn off the lights for that?" Lex asked him, glancing upwards.

"Don't feel like it."

Lex frowned, and shifted in place.

Then he finally realized what had been bothering him since Clark had first pulled him in so close.

"Clark--" Lex started.

"Cal."

Lex grimaced. "Cal," he allowed, as he tried to shove away from him as much as Clark would let him. "Are you feeling all right?"

...That, as it turned out, ended up being barely enough to get an elbow under him and leverage himself up on his side to look down at Clark critically.

Clark slowly opened his eyes and looked up at him.

"Yeah," Clark said slowly. "I'm fine. I feel great."

But the drugged grin from earlier that evening was slow in coming, and Clark was far paler than usual and sweating lightly. He didn't look good.

Combined with the racing heartbeat Lex felt through his chest, under his fingers, Lex didn't want to think what that meant about Clark's actual state of being.

 _Drug overdose?_ Lex wondered. ...But one that took four hours to set in? _Withdrawal, maybe,_ he revised grimly.

"Cl--" he stopped himself. " _Cal,_ we need to get you to a hospital," he told him.

Clark stared up at him, and Lex's fingers slipped down off of his chest as Clark languidly rolled over onto his back -- no, not languidly, he was moving slowly, almost _sluggishly_ \-- and tucked an arm under his head. He gave Lex an amused look.

"A hospital?" Clark tilted his head slightly. "Why?"

"Because you **aren't** okay," Lex pressed, sitting up completely. "You're coming off of the drug, and you're going to need help," Lex told him tersely, taking in his pupil dilation, the state of his breathing. "If the way your responses have degraded are any indication, you're going to crash soon. Hard."

But Clark's only response to this was to furrow his brow and stare up at him.

"Drug?" he was asked. "What drug?"

"The drug you took," Lex said, feeling no small exasperation with him for playing dumb about something like this. "The drug you're on right now. The _same_ one, if your behavior is any indication, that you were on for that brief day or two in your sophomore year on high school, and by all reports during most of your summer in Metropolis," Lex reminded him thinly.

Clark levered himself upright slowly, staring at Lex.

"I..." he said quietly. His gaze dropped and his eyes narrowed, then sharpened, as though he were waking up mentally a bit again, and his focus turned inward.

Lex watched Clark's eyes shift back and forth for a moment, then reach a hand up to touch his lips and pull his fingers away.

"Huh," said Clark, looking down at his fingertips. "I guess it was the lipstick."

"What?"

Clark turned his head, then tilted it at Lex and smiled sideways at him.

"Oh, Lois was acting really freaky this morning," Clark told him, rubbing his fingers together lightly. "I tried telling Chloe about it this afternoon, but she just laughed it off." His smile widened. "Can you believe I was actually trying to _avoid_ her before?" he asked Lex like it was the funniest thing.

"This morning..." Lex said slowly.

"Yeah," Clark said. "She went all Love Potion number 9 on me. Kind of weird, but kind of cool," he said, considering it almost absently. "I found out last night at the Talon party that she'd broken up with Oliver. She was pretty bitter about it, too. She wasn't acting that way _then_ , but..." He shrugged. "His loss, my gain."

"You left her at the mansion, Clark," Lex said, more than a little angry with Clark's attitude, drugged or not, and he was starting to grow worried, as well. If Clark hadn't been the only one who'd been -- _accidentally?_ \-- drugged by this shit, and Lane had been on it even longer than Clark...?

Well, it certainly explained a few things. She had been pretty adamant about sticking to alcohol-only as her drug of choice, when last the topic had come up. If the drugging had been an accident on all counts... would anyone catch on quickly enough to do something about it?

Chloe had been there at the engagement party, though, so at least Lane should be--

"So?" Clark told him, and apparently his drugged-up ex-friend was on an entirely different page than he was. "You're my present," he grinned, as he tucked his arms behind his head and leaned back against the pillows at the headboard, "and she's my future. Present meets future. ...eventually. I bet she wouldn't say no."

"No to what?" Lex asked blankly, and then, at Clark's feral grin, he finally got it.

" **NO** ," Lex stated coldly.

"Oh, come on, Lex," Clark said, sitting up. "Lana is the past. You're supposed to forget the past and embrace the future with me!"

Ugh, god -- Clark _and Lane?_ **Hell, no.** The original hated idea of sharing Lana with Clark was bad enough, but _that?!?_ That was far and beyond worse! And--

"You seem to be forgetting something, _Cal_ ," Lex grated out. "I love Lana."

"No, you don't," Clark told him seriously, straightening. "I've seen the way you look at her, and I **know** what _real_ love looks like," he informed Lex, "--I've seen it between Jon and Martha. You want to own her, maybe possess her, but you don't love her. You're only obsessed with what she represents to you: a trophy. A trophy to a competition that doesn't even exist!" he grinned at him madly.

Lex shoved himself away from Clark and off of the bed as quickly as he could, well out of arm's reach.

"I mean, I get it, Lex," Clark said, slowly rising from the bed. "I really do. You're confused."

"Like hell!" Lex shouted, backing away.

"You are," Clark smiled at him, walking towards him. "You are confused. Lionel doesn't love you, and maybe never did. Wouldn't surprise me in the least. And God knows what your mother did or didn't think about you."

" _Shut up!_ " Lex shrank away from him rapidly; only dimly did he feel the involuntary shudder that racked his frame as he retreated. "Shut up." He shuddered again. And Lex knew he couldn't fight Clark physically head-on, not and win, not without any sort of weapon to attempt to equalize the situation and even _survive_ the experience, but this-- _this_ \-- this was--

Clark advanced, not letting up. "The only _friend_ you had growing up was a guy who turned around and tried to kill you after the fact," Clark continued, "because you beat him up once," and Clark kept advancing, "and he was too stupid to commit suicide properly," and Clark backed him right up against the far wall and bracketed him there with his arms and told him, "The moron deserved to die."

Lex turned his head away and pressed himself up against the wall as closely as he could, shaking with an emotion he was sure was too dangerous for him to define.

"And then there's me," Clark said, leaning in close.

"You," Lex repeatedly dully, concentrating on the slightly-gritty feel of the paint on the wall against the side of his face. He didn't even bother to look up at Clark. Didn't want to.

"Yes, **me** ," Clark repeated. He reached out a hand and forcibly tilted Lex's chin up, _making_ Lex meet his gaze. "We were friends, until you set a bunch of meteor freaks on me and mine," he told Lex, then rolled his eyes. "Well, those I considered mine, anyway. And yes, I lied to you for years, not because I wanted to, but because the Kents told me to, and I thought I had to listen to them," he said, and Lex felt his eyes widen.

"Yeah, **them**. Not me. Believe me," he said, letting go of Lex and taking a step back, "I would've told you first thing, if I'd thought I could." He paused, then lowered his flung-up hands and gave a lopsided grimace. "Well, once I knew what the hell was going on, anyway." He shook his head and looked annoyed, even as he smiled. "I was running scared for a solid year, there -- and then another year after that," he told Lex, taking two steps backwards away from him, giving Lex a little breathing room, and Lex could only stare after him.

"For the longest time, I didn't have a clue. Until what happened at the bridge between us, and _then_ Jonathan finally stopped lying to me," Clark began pacing around the room, "and -- how stupid was I? -- I didn't even believe him until he showed me! And then I didn't want to. But then those damn caves," he continued, getting more and more animated -- and _agitated_ , which probably wasn't a good sign -- "and then the damn Ship! And-- fuck it," he said turning back towards Lex. "I told-- well, **showed** Lois some of what I can do tonight, I might as well **tell** you," he said.

"Tell me what?" Lex said, then he finally started to regain some mental footing. "Tell me about the Black Ship?" he said angrily, because damn it, he'd figured that out on his own without any of Clark's vaunted 'help', thank you!

"The Black--" Clark shook his head and laughed. "No!" he said. "Besides, you already know about that, don't you? You were working with it -- well, _him_ , Fine?" Clark said. "Milton Fine? Brainiac? The Brain Interactive Console? Zod's insane computer?"

"I wasn't _working_ with it!" Lex spat out hotly, thoroughly offended, but he outright shivered at the implications there, especially of Clark knowing multiple names for it -- knowing anything much about it at all, in fact.

Clark gave him a long look. "Oh, come on," he said. "Just admit it already. I know you were working together, helping Zod."

"I wasn't working with it!" Lex repeated. "And I wasn't trying to help Zod! I was working **against** it -- I," -- God, the rage he felt at Clark's accusation -- "I was trying to double-cross the damned thing!" And that, somehow, stole Clark's full attention.

Lex barely had time to flinch before Clark was right up in his face again -- looking intrigued, of all things. "You were what?" he was asked.

"I was trying to double-cross it," Lex repeated, holding his ground. Because, god help him, if Clark was going to be laying it all out there, and _finally_ outright admitting to things he'd insisted Lex was crazy for thinking and believing in, then by god Lex would match him truth for truth, and make him choke on it!

"That 'Dr. Milton Fine' had no records," Lex told him, chin coming up. "Then it claimed to be some sort of government agent, which it wasn't. I was eventually able to track it down via satellite. The thing could move faster than most cameras can pick up," he told Clark, "but I eventually tracked the Black Ship down again to where it had moved itself to in South America, and I caught three of those Fine-constructs on satellite imagery meeting up nearby after another one of them was created by the Ship."

That looked like news to Clark, who reared back slightly. "Multiple copies?" he said quietly.

Lex nodded tersely. "Most of them seemed to spontaneously disintegrate at a fixed time just prior to Zod's... to Zod's appearance," Lex said. "It's possible that some unknown duplicates might have survived and eluded detection up until now, but that scenario is less likely each additional day that my global scans haven't found it." He'd never stopped looking ...just in case.

"Fuck. Multiple copies." Clark paced away again. "I **hate** that thing," he spat out, in a caustic tone that Lex had never heard from him before.

"I wasn't working with Zod," Lex repeated slowly, feeling like he was gaining ground. "Fine approached me and wanted me to create a super-virus, a plague to end all plagues, using the worst plagues the world over. I created a super-antidote instead. I needed to know what it was doing, so I acted like I was working with it to keep it occupied, so it wouldn't go working with someone else in the meantime, doing something I couldn't track or stop. And when it confronted me about it, I tried using meteor rock on it--"

"But it didn't work," Clark said grimly, turning to look at him. "Meteor rock doesn't affect it."

"No, it didn't," Lex said, wondering how Clark knew about Kryptonian weaknesses. "It said that Kryptonians had made it, and that it was stronger, better." ...And that would make a lot more sense if it was some kind of reconfigurable alien computer or robot, not 'just' a spaceship, as Clark had implied. He took in a breath. "It injected me with something. I think it modified the antidote somehow."

Clark was looking at him in a way that Lex couldn't interpret, and Lex swallowed and made the great plunge anyway, admitting something he knew he probably shouldn't, that just about anyone could take advantage of: "I can't remember anything that happened after that moment, between that confrontation and when I woke up in a cornfield days later on Dark Thursday. Lana was the one who told me about what happened in-between, and about being possessed by Zod."

He ground to a halt there, not least of which because Clark was shaking his head at him.

"No, you were working with him," Clark told him. He sounded frustrated, almost, like there were pieces in his head that just wouldn't fit together properly. As though believing in the less-obvious would lose him something far too important, somehow, that he just _couldn't_ let go of, not without risking his sanity. ...Lex knew that feeling. Intimately. "You _were_ working with Brainiac. You _wanted_ Zod to take you."

"No," Lex said quietly, taking an involuntary step towards him. "I would _never_. I would rather have _died_ than let that--" He had to take a few breaths to calm himself. "I would rather have died than have played host to that evil thing, to let it destroy humanity and take over the planet. But the Black Ship grabbed me in the interim," Lex said. "I don't know what happened, but whatever you think must have happened, I _can't_ have been in my right mind at the time!" Lex insisted, voice shaking, as he tried to break through to him that--

Clark was looking at him oddly.

"You... couldn't say no," Clark said slowly.

"If I'd been given a choice, I would have killed myself first," Lex told him firmly, and he meant every word.

Clark frowned at him slightly, and paced forward again, then sideways, and began to circle him.

"But that's what you're doing," Clark said. "You're trying to take over the planet now."

"What?!" Lex blurted out, shocked.

"The Level 33.1 projects," Clark said, continuing to circle him, like a panther stalking prey. "You're building an army of super-powered meteor-freak soldiers."

"Of course I am!" Lex said. "We're already under siege! We need to be prepared for the next wave of Kryptonians--" He stopped himself, because _wait a fucking minute--_ "--How the _hell_ do you know about 33.1?" Lex asked him dangerously.

Clark stopped in place, in front of him. "Oliver told me."

Oliver told... "-- _Oliver Queen?_ " Lex said, reeling in shock. Then he realized something. "Lionel lied!"

Clark blinked at him.

"Lionel lying is new to you?" Clark asked, giving him an amused look.

But Lex was irate. "He lied to me _about you!_ " Lex said. "He said you were at home, having dinner with him and Martha -- that you weren't at that facility!"

"Which one and when?" Clark asked.

Lex spluttered.

Clark just rolled his eyes. "You've got a lot of them, and that's a lot of accusation you're making there, Lex," he said, like he was making some great concession.

"January 20'th, the Ridge Facility," Lex rattled off from memory as he glared at Clark -- not that difficult for him to recall, the break-in having happened not two weeks prior.

"Yup, I was there," Clark admitted brazenly. "...Wait, Lionel came over for dinner that night?" he added, making a face.

"You broke in--"

"You kidnapped Bart," Clark said, sounding bored. "I actually kind of like the guy. He's fun."

Oh, _wonderful_. Clark was not only on a first-name basis with at least one of the terrorists, he was **friends** with them.

"He's been breaking into my facilities and stealing sensitive database files, then destroying the computer systems afterwards, for weeks now," Lex told him tersely.

"No, Bart said he wasn't stealing any-- more. Huh," said Clark, frowning and thinking it over. "He did say it was 'complicated.' I wonder what Oliver has on him."

"Oh, it just figures," Lex spat out. " _Oliver Queen_ goes and buys himself a bunch of super-powered terrorists to order around and blow up my facilities, and that's **just fine** , but when _I_ try to build up an army to protect the planet, **that's** crossing the line!"

"Actually, I tried to call him on that," Clark told Lex, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "but he kinda insists that it's the other way around. Oh, and that you want to start a war."

" _With the damned alien invaders!!_ " Lex shouted at Clark, standing over him. "Not other humans!"

"Well, why don't you just tell him that?"

"Because I didn't know he was funding them!" Lex said angrily, pacing away from Clark. "Not that it's likely that he'd stop if I did," _the bullying ass._ "--Would he even be able to call them off?" Lex knew from experience how hard it could be to try to reel in super-powered individuals once they'd decided to hold a grudge -- it was difficult at best, if not nigh-on impossible. "Would they even listen to him?"

"Well, he is leading them."

"He's _what?!?_ " Lex wheeled towards Clark, then he felt his chest constrict. "He-- That--" He felt his eyes widen as he finally realized exactly what Clark was implying. " **He--** "

Clark just sat there and scratched the back of his head, waiting for Lex to calm down, apparently.

" _How long have you known,_ " Lex demanded of him, fists clenched at his sides.

"That he's the Green Arrow?" Clark shrugged, confirming the very worst. "A couple of months. He kind of caught me at catching him, or -- believe me -- I'd have trussed him up and turned him over to the police in a heartbeat for the whole stealing gig, right then and there."

Lex stood there and stared at him.

Clark's response to this was to roll his eyes at him, and lounge back on his elbows. "C'mon, Lex," he said. "Ollie's an idiot with a bow and a hoodie, not a meteor freak. He wouldn't keep quiet about me unless I would about him, too, and for awhile there I thought he'd still go off and tell people anyway, just because he could."

"...And now you don't care about that," Lex said slowly, it suddenly dawning on him what this meant.

Clark made a face, and waved Lex off. "Whatever. He tells, he tells. Or, y'know, I can make sure that you can kill him, and that he can't kill you while you're doing it," Clark said.

_...help me kill him?_

"That'd take care of it, right? He can't talk about me _or_ keep the team going if he's dead," Clark said. "And it did kind of piss me off when he shot you in your office and killed you."

_Shot me in my office--!!_

"You were there," Lex said numbly. "You were there when..."

"He shot you in the chest and you shot him back? Yeah," Clark said. "A little late getting there, but... yeah," he shrugged. "The drugged-up idiot actually tried to convince me not to use that healing serum on you and let you stay dead -- can you believe that?"

Lex sat down on the bed next to Clark before his legs gave out on him.

"...Thank you?" Lex said belatedly, and it was about that point that he realized that the shock of the entire fucked-up situation was finally starting to catch up to him.

Clark sat up again and smiled at him.

"Sure," Clark said. And then he got an almost feral grin. "So, I'm waiting for the apology."

"...Apology?" Lex repeated faintly.

"Yeah," said Clark. "For the whole sending-meteor-freaks-after-me-and-the-Kents thing, which you wouldn't even admit that you did when you did it," he reiterated. "I mean, you know that's why we're not friends anymore, right?"

Lex nodded dumbly.

"So, you'll admit what you did and I'll forgive you," Clark said, "and then we'll be friends again."

"Just like that," Lex said distantly.

"Well, sure," Clark said. "I stopped being friends with you, and then you started acting all," he made a hand motion, "like a jerk. But, I remember what you told me," Clark said, leaning in close, "that you'd do _anything_ for your friends." He leaned back again. "And you weren't lying to me when you said it, either." He smiled and clapped Lex on the shoulder. "And since we'll be friends again, and you'll do anything for me, things will work out just fine. So."

Clark said there and stared at Lex, waiting.

Lex took in a deep breath, or tried to -- he could only manage a shallow one.

"I'm sorry I tried to force you to admit that you're a meteor freak by sending meteor freaks after you," Lex said, more calmly than really should have been possible under the circumstances.

"I'm not a meteor freak," Clark grinned at him, "but sure. Apology accepted." He clapped a hand over Lex's shoulder and shook it lightly. "See?" he said, then leaned in close. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"No..." Lex said softly as Clark pulled away, only now beginning to wonder how bad the fallout was going to be from this once Clark came down off of whatever he was on at-present.

"Yeah," said Clark. "Don't you wish you'd done that sooner?"

At the way Clark was grinning at him right now, Lex was helpless to do anything but nod back.

But if there was one thing about being friends with Clark that made life hellish by comparison, it was the demands he made on you when he considered you a friend.

So Lex sat there and braced himself for the worst.

"Okay," said Clark, and he gave Lex a slight laugh and fell back on the bed. "Sleep now, and we'll take over the world tomorrow."

Lex blinked down at him from the mental whiplash. "...I don't want to take over the world," he reminded Clark.

"Oh, yeah?" Clark said, stopping to think that over for a moment. "Really?"

Lex shook his head.

"Huh," said Clark, then he seemed to shrug it off and run with it. "Okay, I guess we'll think of something else that's fun to do, then, instead," he said with a smile.

 _...Because taking over the planet is 'fun',_ Lex thought weakly. _What the hell have I just gotten myself into?_

"And what exactly happens in the morning when the drug finally wears off," Lex asked him wearily, as Clark shoved himself back up onto the bed completely.

"Huh?" Clark said. "Oh. That. Don't worry, it won't wear off that quickly," Clark told him. "If this is what I think it is, one dose works for weeks at a time," he was told. "I guess we could go looking for more of the Red first, if you're that worried about it," Clark told him, stifling a yawn.

_Weeks at a--? **That's** not normal..._

But out loud Lex said, "If you're sure that you're all right..." slowly, as he slid up onto the bed and lay down on his side next to Clark, watching him. And he noted that Clark's symptoms hadn't exactly improved in the intervening time.

"I was on it for practically three months in a row, Lex, except for a couple minutes here and there. Don't worry about it," he was told.

Lex shook himself, and did indeed try not to think too hard about it. Clark had all but hit him with information overload in the past few hours, and he desperately needed time and quiet to parse it all, _without_ worrying about Clark, himself.

But there was one thing that he still needed to ask now before all else.

"Cal," Lex asked carefully. "You know a lot more about what's going on with the Kryptonians than I do, correct?"

"Mmm, yeah," Clark said. "Well, mostly, I guess. I didn't know about the multiple Brainiac copies," he admitted, stretching and then relaxing, glancing over at Lex with something like amusement. "Why?" He turned over onto his side and propped his head up to look at Lex straight-on. "What do you want to know so badly that you can't fall asleep yet?"

Lex took a shallow breath, then took the second plunge of the night. "Is Zod gone?"

"Yep, back in the Phantom Zone."

Lex took it at face-value, even if he had no idea what that actually meant, other than that _Zod was gone, thank god_.

Clark yawned. "Anything else?"

Of course there was, but much farther and Lex would truly be taking advantage of Clark in his drugged state. --At the very least, it all should probably wait 'til the morning, when Clark would be less likely to snap at him over a zillion unending questions.

...Though there _was_ one other thing that absolutely _couldn't_ wait, now that he thought of it. "Do you know anything about Kal-El?" Lex asked of him.

Clark blinked at him, then began to grin. "Oh, sure. Lots." And he had a strange gleam in his eyes as he said, "But you don't have to worry about Kal-El at all anymore."

Lex blinked at him, then licked his lips slightly and asked a final, dangerous question.

"Why?"

Clark's grin grew wider, and wider, and there was a strange glint in his eyes as he spoke next.

And he said: "Because me and my mom killed him."

At that, Clark proceeded to settle down onto his back, close his eyes, and relax.

Lex lay there and stared at Clark for a long, long time.

And as he lay there next to Clark and watched Clark's breathing slow, but Clark himself not fall asleep, he finally let his eyes drift shut and forced himself to review his options.

He _could_ try to get away. He could wait until Clark fell asleep, and steal the car keys back from him, and leave. But... Clark would not take that well. In the way Clark's seemingly-unfiltered responses were reflecting his state of mind at-present, acting as though he was perfectly happy to have either Lex or Lana at his side interchangeably, how he'd thrown Lois to the wayside without a second thought or any remorse whatsoever, how he was perfectly willing to help Lex kill Oliver _or take over the planet for kicks_...

No, he would not take Lex running away from him well.

Not that Lex Luthor ever ran away from anything. Except maybe psychotic alien monsters when he didn't have a working weapon to use on them in-hand. Clark wasn't quite _that_ bad. And he _was_ high on something and not reacting to it well. He might profess his own ability to handle it, but clearly that was not the case. Hell, he hadn't even had the presence of mind to _realize_ that he was high in the first place!

If Lex left now, and Clark took a turn for the worse... well, his relationship with Clark might be on shaky grounds at-present, but he wasn't even sure that he'd treat _Oliver_ with such disregard, and Oliver was his worst (human) enemy, next to Zod (who wasn't. Human). (...Then again, Lionel and Brainiac-Fine were close seconds, and he would be perfectly willing to let either of them die from a drug overdose without issue; Zod as well, if that were even possible without only his host suffering the consequences of it.)

Besides, Martha would not be happy with him if he just up and left Clark out in the middle of nowhere while he still wasn't in anything resembling his right mind, especially when Clark wasn't physically well and only getting worse over time. And neither would Lana be, even as disgusted with Clark's recent behavior as she had been when last he saw her.

For better or worse, he was going to have to stay with 'Cal' for the moment.

...But if he could stay awake long enough, and Clark fell asleep first, he could, at least, step out for a moment and call Lana to let her know what was going on. Clark hadn't had the presence of mind to take his cellphone away from him.

So he lay there and tried to relax and wait, while trying _not_ to think about the ramifications of all this, and what Clark, in his drugged-up state, might decide to demand of him next.

But, as it turned out, Lex didn't get a chance to do anything about it. Lana rescued him first.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	8. Chapter 8

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was startled by the sound of the door being slammed open.

"Lex!" he heard, and he blinked several times.

"I'm all right, Lana," he said quietly as he sat up in bed, pushing himself upright with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other. It was still dark out, but...

Lana stood there in the doorway and stared at him. "...Were you asleep?" she said, almost an accusation given her tone.

Lex grimaced slightly. Frankly, he wasn't sure. He hadn't meant to fall asleep again, certainly, but...

He glanced down at Clark, who was on his side again, facing him.

Clark's eyes were wide open and watching him.

_Shit!_ Lex thought with a jolt, and wondered if Clark had been testing him, and _how long_ Clark had been watching him. Given the small amused smile he got as he watched Clark slide his eyes shut, Lex was thinking that it must have been a good long while, at least.

Well, damn. Now he was almost glad that he'd probably dozed off. He was _definitely_ glad that he hadn't tried anything.

"Is he--?" Lana asked, taking a step into the room.

"Still drugged, not asleep," Lex informed her neutrally.

Clark sighed deeply, and proceeded to sit up, clearly not tired in the least. "Spoilsport."

Lex debated asking Lana if she was all right, but given that she'd changed clothing and didn't seem hurt, discretion might be the better part of valor, given who was sitting in bed with him just then.

"Lex, we're leaving," Lana said firmly, standing near the door.

"No," said Clark, shifting into what looked to be a more comfortable position. " _We_ are staying right here." He pulled his left knee up towards his chest and rested his elbow on it casually, then propped his chin on his fist like he was getting ready to watch a show. "You can go though," he said airily, waving his free hand at her, as if shooing her out.

Lex stayed where he was, didn't move an inch.

Clark glanced over at him and started to grin.

"Go ahead, Lex," Clark egged him on. "Tell her that you'd rather be with me!"

Lana stared at the two of them for a moment, shocked, then seemed to recenter herself and glared at Clark.

"He's not bisexual," she said firmly.

"Ah, so you _did_ have that talk," Clark said. He smiled and dropped his knee, waving his hand. "Well, that's okay. I'm straight, Lex is straight. But, see, the thing is, Lana," he said, as he reached out and grabbed Lex's arm, "None of that really matters. He's mine."

"Lana," Lex said slowly, "I'm fine. Just go." He tried to communicate to her with his gaze exactly how unsafe it was for her to be here.

"Oh no, I think she'll want to stay for this," Clark said, and when Lex glanced back over at Clark and saw the spark in his eyes...

"Clark, you don't have to do this," Lex said slowly, though what he really wanted to do was run. Or for Lana to leave -- _quickly_ \-- because 'Cal' played to an audience and if she just left he would calm down again and...

"Oh, I think I do," Clark told him. "You still think that she loves you. That you're in love with her." Clark gripped his arm a little more tightly and dragged him in close, right up next to him. "That's about to change."

"Clark!" Lana yelled at him. "Let him go!"

"W-what are you--" Lex stammered, because Clark was reaching his other hand around to the base of his neck and--

Lex's eyes went wide and he shoved his hands between them, trying to get leverage to push against Clark's chest, but Clark-- Clark was _so_ much stronger than he was, and when Clark's lips met his--

...

\--Clark was pulling away from him slowly, letting him go -- or not quite, just letting Lex have some small distance, letting go of his neck but not his arm -- and Lex was suddenly made aware that he'd had his eyes closed when he opened them again and stared up at _**Clark**_. ...And then felt a bit dizzy, like the room had been spinning around and in an instant came to a sudden screeching halt.

He realized next that, at some point after being grabbed -- after _Clark_ had grabbed him -- he had lost track of time and the world around him.

"What do you really expect is going to happen now, Clark?" Lex heard Lana say shakily, with suppressed anger and tears in her voice, but it was like hearing things underwater, and he got the vague feeling that something wasn't right...

He saw Clark turn his head towards her. "Exactly what you're afraid of."

Lex couldn't muster the presence of mind to understand what was going on. _What had just happened?_ Had Clark really kissed him? Had he... actually _enjoyed_ it?

He...

Had _Clark...?_ Had he...

\--Had Lex himself? Had _he_...

He didn't know. He wasn't sure. He _couldn't tell--_

...Did he not know love for what it was? Or did he...?

Didn't he...

_What had just happened?_

"I-- I--" Lex stammered quietly. His mind went blank. His head slowly dropped. He felt himself swaying in place.

Clark turned back towards him.

"Really?" he said, lifting Lex's chin with a hand. Lex felt himself tearing up, because not this, no, not this--

"This isn't a competition!" Lana said. "I'm not--"

\--not this, please no--

"This isn't _about_ you, Lana," Clark said coldly, as Lex blinked and felt moisture drip down his cheeks. "Maybe you were to Lex, but not anymore."

Clark stared into Lex's eyes and demanded lowly, almost urgently, "Now, tell me you don't love her, Lex! Tell me you don't--"

Lex flinched as a wet spray hit him in the side of his face.

"What the hell...?" Clark said, rearing back slightly and letting go of him completely.

Lex fell to all fours on the bed, mind reeling. ...In relief? Or something else? _What...?_

He raised a shaking hand to his face and felt something slightly wet. It wasn't tears but...

He slowly looked up at Clark, who reached out towards him, moved a hand towards his face, then snarled and backed off -- right off of the edge of the bed until he was standing up.

Clark clenched his hand closed into a fist. He looked irate.

"Oh, you clever, _clever_ girl," Clark said like a curse, slowly turning towards her with a feral look in his eye. A grin flashed across his face, and it promised pain. "I hadn't thought you'd figured that out." He paused. "That's not going to keep me from him for very long, though."

Clark took a single, predatory step towards Lana.

"Stay back!" Lana cried out, backing off, but holding the spray bottle out in front of her.

Clark stood still and looked at her with murder in his eyes, then said calmly, "Oh, you don't want to do that. You can't win. You don't even know the rules of the game, Lang."

Lana circled around to the base of the bed, but Clark lunged forward -- in a feint -- and she jumped back in fear, which left Clark grinning wildly.

"Stop it!" Lex begged, shoving himself off of the bed and reaching for Clark.

And Clark did stop. For a moment. Just long enough to stare at Lex and peer at him like he was suddenly seeing something he hadn't before, though Lex wasn't sure what.

Then he pushed Lex back onto the bed and turned towards Lana again, who was trying to inch her way along the wall back towards the door.

"You know," Clark told Lana casually, pacing over to the side table. "I think I've finally got it all figured out." With a lightning-fast motion, he whipped his arm up and around, grabbed the bedside lamp and tossed it at her -- no, to her side. She dodged it -- barely -- but it hadn't been aimed directly at her.

"Lex wants a family," he tossed the side table at the wall to her left next. She gasped and turned, but avoided that too, if only barely -- except he'd thrown it so hard it _shattered_ when it hit, and she had to throw her arms up to shield herself from the pieces.

Clark stared her down intently as he said, "But it doesn't have to be _you_."

Lex finally realized what Clark was doing. He was corralling her, controlling her movements, her reactions.

"Clark, _don't!_ " Lex shouted out, but Clark was ignoring him.

"He just wants his kid," Clark said, picking up a wooden chair by the back and flipping it in his hand, to catch it by one of the legs. To hold it like a weapon. "The fact that it's **you** pregnant with it is just... incidental."

Lana looked afraid, but angry as hell, as she backed up straight into the corner -- right where Clark wanted her.

Clark advanced, but only so far. _Only to about three feet away,_ Lex noted in a small, quiet corner of his mind, divorced from the majority of the frantic mess the rest of him was drowning in. _...He's never gotten closer to her than three feet away._

Lex got back up from the bed and made his way forward, trembling with panic and fear, because Clark had been manhandling him all night, breaking things like it was nothing, completely out of control, and he couldn't do anything to stop him. Deep down he knew he wasn't going to be able to physically stop Clark from doing _whatever_ he wanted to Lana -- _Lana_ \-- and...

"If I'd known that you were going to get between us like this, I never would have traded Jonathan's life for yours," Clark growled out, raising the chair up even with Lana's head.

Lex felt the blood drain out of his face in a rush.

"Damnit Cal, _**DON'T KILL HER!!**_ " Lex yelled out, scared beyond all reason, and all but tackling the arm holding the chair.

Lex didn't budge Clark an inch, not even hanging off of him with his full weight like he was, but Clark _did_ whip his head around to him at hearing the 'correct' name.

"Lex, don't be stupid," he was frowned down at with no small exasperation, "I'm not going to kill her, I'm just going to--"

And then he stumbled in place and dropped the chair, as Lana rushed forward, within the three foot range.

Lex lost hold of him, almost fell in trying to regain his footing.

He watched Clark spin back towards her, gasping out a breath -- in pain? -- and looking nothing so much as shocked, as Lana sprayed a huge cloud of the green mist directly into his face.

Clark reflexively tried to twist away, but there was too much of it, too close. He inhaled a substantial amount of the mist on his next breath in, as Lana had no doubt intended.

And he collapsed like a rag doll.

Lex stood there and stared down at him, barely able to remain standing.

Then Lana leaped forward and grabbed him, and his knees gave out.

So did hers. They both ended up in a tangle of limbs sitting together on the floor.

...As Lex wrapped his arms around her, he came to find that he wasn't the only one who was shuddering in reaction.

"That... was not a game," Lex said, voice weak and shaking.

"That was worse than Lois," Lana said, sniffling, as she hugged Lex close.

"Worse than..." Lex looked down at her, confused.

"She fought back when Chloe and Jimmy tried to use the antidote on her," Lana said, pulling away from him slightly to wipe tears away from her eyes with quick swipes of her fingers.

"...Was it the lipstick?" Lex said, remembering what Clark had said earlier.

"What?" Lana looked up at him, startled. "How did you know about--?"

Lex shook his head. "Clark figured it out, after I finally convinced him he was drugged."

Lana got an incredulous look. "He didn't know he was high?"

"Not until I pointed it out to him ...and actually made him think about it," Lex said with a sigh. "I think Lois must have transferred some of it by kissing him on the lips at some point." After a moment's thought, he added, "It was probably good that you hit me with the spray, too." It would have explained his reaction to Clark's... well, it likely accounted for his reaction to Clark afterwards, maybe.

He glanced down at Lana. "Are you all right?"

Lana nodded at him, tucking herself under his arm again.

_Thank god._ He let himself sag in place, curling his other arm around Lana gently, but tightly.

...Not **possessively** , dammit.

"Dare I ask how long Lois was down for the count after she was sprayed?" Lex asked her, looking back over at Clark.

Lana frowned. "She wasn't."

Lex blinked and looked down at her.

Lana sighed and shook her head. "She just sort of gasped, and blinked, and... was back to her usual self again." He felt Lana wince in... sympathy? "She didn't even remember what had happened."

Lex let out a slow breath. He glanced over at Clark warily. If Clark was faking it... could he be faking it?

He slowly let go of Lana and pulled away from her.

"Lex," Lana said, almost in exasperation. "Just..."

With no small trepidation, which he did try rather hard to suppress, Lex crouched and shifted closer to Clark, then carefully leaned over him. Because, if Clark was still high, he really wouldn't put it past him to snap upright with a wild grin and scare the crap... out of...

Lex frowned.

He stepped over Clark, and crouched down again.

And he felt his breath catch when he realized...

"Lana," he croaked out.

"What?"

Lex shivered, and tried to swallow with a suddenly too-dry mouth. "Lana," he repeated, only a little less hoarsely. "Clark isn't breathing."

That got her attention. "What??"

Lex felt the first stirrings of a new and different panic shoot through his chest. "Clark _isn't breathing_ ," he repeated.

Lana looked up at him with widening eyes, and she glanced down at Clark briefly, but when she looked up at Lex again, she narrowed her eyes at him.

"That isn't funny," she said, but Lex barely heard her.

"Help me," he said, starting to pull at Clark's arms. "Help me get him on his side," he said urgently, because Clark was sprawled face-down on the floor, and his chest wasn't moving at all, but maybe if they got the pressure of gravity off of him--

Lana must have realized that it wasn't a joke, because she moved forward and helped Lex rearrange Clark into a basic first-aid recovery position on the floor with a grim set to her jaw -- on his side, one arm under his head to pillow it, other arm forward loosely, knees slightly bent to keep him from tilting off his side too far one way or the other, all meant to take as much strain off of the operation of his heart and lungs as possible.

Lex practically ripped Clark's shirt open, getting the constraining material open at his chest.

He checked Clark's pulse at his wrist, paying careful attention to Clark's throat and chest as he did so, and sat back on his heels with a short sigh of relief when he realized that Clark **was** breathing (...again?), if very shallowly, and had a pulse, even if it was dangerously thready.

"I... I didn't mean to..." Lana said quietly, with the first stirrings of horror beginning to etch lines into her face.

"I know," Lex said. "You didn't have much choice. He would have hurt you," he told her. "And he needed to be stopped."

"But..."

"Lana, he wasn't listening to me, and he told me earlier that he's been high before on... _whatever_ he was on... for weeks from just one dose," Lex told her. "Believe me, you did the right thing." He took a breath, then added, "If Clark had been in his right mind, he would have wanted you to stop him -- you know that."

Lana nodded once, but she bit her lip, clearly feeling guilt.

Lex looked down at Clark, gauging his other symptoms. He was sweating heavily, far more than he had been before, and looked pale as a ghost, almost death-warmed-over.

"He must be allergic to one of the ingredients in that antidote," Lex told her. "Do you know what was in it?"

Lana shook her head no.

"All right," Lex said quietly. He pulled out his phone, then paused to wince at the look Lana leveled at him. "...I didn't have a chance away from him to call," he told her slowly, with a calm he surely didn't feel.

"No, but you seemed to have the chance to fall asleep next to him, in bed, wearing his coat," Lana said quietly, wrapping her arms around herself.

Lex glanced down at himself briefly. "If he hadn't given me his coat, I'd likely have frozen half to death in that topless convertible," he told her, and in retrospect... "I don't doubt that the stress to my system from the chill contributed to my fatigue."

Lana inched a little closer to him. "Lex, do you even _know_..." she asked as he dialed, as if it meant something that Clark had given him his coat.

Lex glanced down at her. "Lana?"

But Lana just shook her head.

Lex waited.

"...If he was on the same thing he was on that summer, when he ran away to Metropolis..." Lana said. She looked up at him with something approaching fear and dread in her eyes. "He didn't care about _anyone_ then, Lex," she told him. "But tonight he cared about how _you_ were feeling, enough to..." she trailed off.

Lana leaned against his side, looking down, absently picking at the sleeve of Clark's leather jacket around Lex's arm, and Lex could only sit there and frown.

He glanced down at Clark. _Did that really mean something?_

Lex shook his head -- that wasn't the most important thing to be worried about right now. He finished dialing, and hit the call button, then put it on speakerphone.

It rang once, twice, and then picked up.

"Lex?" he heard. "Is that you?"

"Hello, Mrs. Kent," he told her.

"Lex!" he heard over the phone. "Oh, thank goodness. --Are you all right?"

Lex couldn't help but smile sadly. "I'm fine. And so is Lana -- she's here with me," he said, glancing down at her. "But Clark isn't all right."

"What?"

"I think he might be allergic to whatever was in the antidote spray to the drugged lipstick he was exposed to," Lex extrapolated, "from when Lois kissed him. He collapsed when we used it on him." Lex took in a breath. "Do you know what was in it, or anything he's allergic to that might have caused such a violent reaction?"

There was a pregnant pause, and Lex felt his brow furrow, while Lana shifted next to him. So it wasn't just him -- she'd picked up on it, too.

"No, I don't," they finally heard Mrs. Kent say.

They glanced at each other.

"Where are you?" Mrs. Kent said. "I'll come and get him."

Lex felt the first stirrings of unease uncoil deep in his gut.

He glanced over at Lana and said, "Mrs. Kent, we're at least six to eight hours out of Smallville at the speed limit." which was 60 miles an hour, and when Lana nodded at him, he knew he'd guessed the timetable correctly. "We can get him to a hospital for you, while--"

"--No," Mrs. Kent said immediately, and Lex felt a chill at hearing that single, sharp word. "I'll take care of him, just tell me where you are."

Lex swallowed, then said, slowly, "Mrs. Kent, I don't think you fully understand the situation. Clark is having trouble breathing--"

"Lex," he heard her say, almost indulgently, but with just a hint of irritation, "The longer you take to tell me, the longer it will take for me to get there. Clark will be fine in the meantime," she said.

Lex stared down at his phone for a long moment, mind whirling at Mrs. Kent's blithe reaction.

"...How do you know," Lex finally said, and it was a wonder his voice didn't shake.

Lana was glancing between him and the phone with no small alarm. "Lex..." she said quietly.

"How do you _know_ ," Lex said, in rising tones, "that he will be all right, if you don't know what he's reacting to, and don't know what all his symptoms are. Have you ever seen this before, Mrs. Kent?" he asked her.

"Lex--" Martha began tersely.

Lex snapped the phone shut, ending the call.

Lana was alarmed, and Lex was shaking with reaction, staring down at Clark.

"Lex, what in the world..." Lana asked him.

But Lex couldn't look away from him.

"He wasn't lying," Lex told her quietly.

"What?"

"He wasn't lying," he said a little more loudly. "He wasn't lying about Martha," and the _implications_ of that--

Lex turned to look over at Lana, and for the first time that night, he truly **felt** a bone-deep terror.

"Lana, I don't think he was lying about any of it," he told her, feeling utterly ill. "Everything he told me..."

Lana suddenly looked adamant. "Clark was high," she told him. "He probably didn't even know what he was saying."

But Lex shook his head at her. "No, no," he said. "You-- you don't **understand** ," he tried to tell her. "What he said--"

"He'll apologize and take it back."

"I don't want him to take it back!" Lex protested, as sick as he felt in that moment. " _He wasn't lying,_ Lana," Lex said, feeling the world tilt under him, because before? Before he might have been able to put it off. This feeling. Believing any of it as really, truly **real** , and something factually correct. But not now. Not with true confirmation of one of the most insane parts of it. That Martha _didn't love Clark._ Didn't really care about Cal-as-Clark. Not anymore.

"He knew about Zod," Lex told her. "And Fine and the Black Ship. _As_ the Black Ship. He-- he called it Brainiac. The Brain Interactive Console," he told her. "He knew it, that Fine was working with Zod. He knew how I'd been possessed by Zod!"

"...What?" Lana said, taken aback.

"Lana, he _knew_ it, and he _admitted_ knowing it!" he told her, feeling frantic. "He-- he was there when Green Arrow blew up one of my facilities not two weeks ago, and Lionel covered for him. He said that Lionel was being... being ordered around by his biological father," he told her. "He said that Oliver Queen is the Green Arrow!"

"Lex--" she said, shaking her head, clearly not believing him.

Lex grabbed her shoulder. "No, no, Lana, _you don't understand_ ," he said desperately. "He knew about how Green Arrow attacked me in my office a month ago."

"What?"

"Green Arrow. He attacked me," Lex told her. "In my office, late at night. No-one else knew about that -- I didn't want to worry you, I--" Lex cut himself off, began again. "I didn't tell _anyone_ that he shot me, that I shot him. That I should have died. There was a healing serum," he said, then shook his head. "Lana, I don't have cameras in that office -- _there was no surveillance footage of that._ The only way Clark could have known about that was if he was there like he said he was, or if he knows Green Arrow personally and Oliver told him. Because **I** didn't tell anyone what happened," he told her, staring her in the eyes, willing her to understand.

"That doesn't mean that Oliver is..."

"Lana, it makes sense," Lex told her, letting go of her arm. "The way he acts -- and how Oliver always disappears right before Green Arrow shows up -- I don't know why I didn't see it before, but it's him. Clark wasn't lying."

"That doesn't mean--"

"And Martha's in on it all," Lex continued. "Clark said she helped him kill Kal-El."

And Lex sat there and watched that last bit of information give Lana pause.

"...Lana?" he asked her.

"I..." she said, then shook her head.

"Lana, _please_ ," he asked her, picking up and holding her hands in his, hoping and praying that she would explain.

She looked down at their hands, held in his, then off to the side, and a pained look crossed her face.

"Lex, I..." She closed her eyes, dropped her head, and looked almost penitent.

Then she opened her eyes, looked back up at him, and said, "Do you remember those two Kryptonians, the ones I told you had come out of the Black Ship?"

"Yes," said Lex.

Lana got a pained look again, and glanced away. "Lex, I told Clark that they were looking for Kal-El," she told him. "That's how he knows that name."

"...But there's more to it than that," Lex said quietly, and she grimaced and pulled her hands from his.

"I told him that they had headed for the mansion," she told Lex. "And he went after them." She looked up at him.

"...And they were never seen again," Lex said slowly, digesting the implications of that. He looked down at her. "He did seem to know about meteor rock being a weakness of Kryptonians, but not of Fine," Lex said quietly, chewing over that bit of information.

"Lex," Lana said, sidling up to him. "Clark isn't going to remember anything of what he told you when he wakes up." She licked her lips and said, "We're not going to be able to get him to admit to anything. --No. _Lex_ ," she said as Lex jerked away from her, reaching up to touch his chin. "Lex, you _need_ to let this go. You _know_ this."

Lex closed his eyes and tried not to think about it, but god it hurt. It hurt worse than...

He was losing Clark all over again.

He slowly lowered his head.

Lana let her hand drop. A soft caress.

"We'll get him to a hospital," Lex said, feeling defeated.

Lana nodded, and gave him a weak sad smile, full of sympathy.

But that was hardly what Lex wanted at the moment.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	9. Chapter 9

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sputtered awake under a thin shower of rain.

...No, not rain. Water.

He was... indoors?

He shoved himself up off of the floor, but he overbalanced, and then his arms gave out. He felt _weak_.

He got his hands under him and tried again, and this time he managed to get his back up against a wall. The wall of the shower stall he was sitting in.

He gasped a few times, chest heaving, as he glanced around. Where the hell was he?

\--Oh god, and where were his clothes?!

He was only in his boxers, but on the other side of a raised lip in the floor, obviously meant to help keep the water in the stall, there was a pile of towels sitting on the tile floor, a few feet away.

Clark shoved himself across the floor, out of the spray of water from the nozzle overhead, and grabbed a towel.

He wrapped the towel around himself and curled up on the tile floor, out of the spray, and lay his head down and shivered for a bit.

When the room finally stopped spinning and the nausea subsided somewhat, Clark slowly pushed himself upright and staggered over to the shower knobs.

He turned them off, then sat down on the floor again. Hard.

It took him awhile before he was able to make his way up and over to the towel pile, slowly.

It took him longer to sit down on the lip of the shower stall and dry himself off.

After he'd managed that, he glanced around again and then felt incredibly stupid.

He pushed himself off of the floor, got himself upright, and walked himself over to a metal chair, which had a new pair of boxers, a pair of sweatpants, and a t-shirt sitting on it.

There as no-one around, so he dropped the sopping wet boxers he was currently wearing, finished drying off, and changed clothing as quickly as he could.

...which wasn't very. He had to sit down on the chair twice before he'd finished.

Looking around again, after resettling in the chair for the moment, he realized that this was some sort of locker room, with multiple shower stalls. The only one that looked used, however, was the one he'd woken up in, and he couldn't see or hear anyone around.

Then he realized what that might mean, that no other people were around.

Trouble. Or worse.

He spent some time panicking, then some more time trying _not_ to panic, because it wasn't helping and he needed to get the hell out of here -- wherever _here_ was! -- before Something Bad happened. To him.

Finally, he regained the presence of mind to force himself upright again, and walk a wavering line towards what looked like an exit to the room.

He caught himself heavily against the doorway, and tried not to grimace.

It belatedly occurred to him that, if none of the doors were closed or locked, and he'd had clothes and towels laid out for him considerately, that somebody else had to be around to have put them there, and he might not be a prisoner after all.

So maybe he was being a little overly paranoid.

Maybe.

"H-Hello?" he called out unsteadily, looking around the corner and into what looked like a hallway. "Is anybody here?"

Silence greeted him. The place was deserted, wherever he was.

"Hello?" he tried again, pushing himself off the wall, then thinking better of it when he almost toppled over, and instead stuck to walking along it closely.

Still no response and nobody around.

Clark scraped around the inside of his throbbing head, trying to make sense of things. The last thing he could remember was being in the hotel room with Lana and Lex, but he was missing time. How had he gotten from there to here? Lana wouldn't drop him someplace unexpected to wander about, but would...

"...Lex?" he tried uncertainly, glancing down the hallway in front of him, and then behind him.

But there was no-one to answer him, and nothing to do but keep walking.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	10. Chapter 10

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex flinched slightly, but it only took him a moment to get his bearings. Then he turned in place and rolled over towards Lana, who had woken him with her light touch to his shoulder.

"Lex," Lana told him, "he's awake."

Lex breathed in, and out, and pushed himself up off of the cot.

"Hello?" he heard Clark say, in a tinny voice reproduced poorly from the pickup through the speakers. "Is anybody there?" Clark continued, as Lex calmly followed Lana around the corner and over to the monitor board in the surveillance office.

"Awake and upright," Lex murmured, taking up a seat next to her, then smiling as she proffered him a cup of hot cocoa. "That's a good sign."

He nearly dropped it when the next thing he heard was, "Hello? Lex?"

"Good guess," Lana said with a slight smile, and Lex winced.

"I suppose so," Lex replied with a little reservation, taking a careful sip from the mug and leaning back in his chair.

"Lex!" he heard Clark demand more strongly, as Clark half-walked, half-staggered along, putting far too much of his weight on the wall for Lex's comfort, and he seemed to be craning his neck around, looking for cameras. ...Not that he'd find them, miniaturized and well-hidden as they were.

Lex stifled a sigh and slid forward in his chair. He was about to reach out and activate the intercom when Clark said something truly dire, and it left him frozen in place with his finger hovering over the switch midair.

And it was: "Damnit Lex, is this about Oliver and the facility?!"

Lex glanced over at Lana, who was nearly as pale as he was, as compared to his own reflection in the metal surfaces nearby.

She met his gaze.

Lex pulled his hand back away from the switch.

"Lex, where are you?" he heard Clark yell. "What's going on?!?"

"I thought he wasn't supposed to remember what happened during the period he was drugged," Lex said slowly.

"He wasn't," Lana said, stunned, watching Clark the monitor. "Lois didn't."

" _Hello?!?!_ " Clark called out to the ceiling, turning in place, frustrated.

They watched him almost lose his balance and have to catch himself against the wall.

Clark grimaced and haltingly regained his equilibrium.

"Great..." they heard him say.

He turned around and slowly slid down the wall to sit down on the floor.

Lex slowly sat back in his chair.

"Can you think of any other reason why Clark might think I would abduct him, due to Oliver, before today?" he asked Lana, rubbing his fingers against his forehead.

Lana grimaced and straightened in place. "No."

Lex sighed and put down his mug. "Well, then."

He reached forward and pressed the appropriate intercom switch for transmission to that section of the building.

"Clark," he said, glancing over at Lana. "Give me a moment. I'm a few floors up."

Clark's head snapped up and Lex watched as Clark glanced up at the ceiling in something like shock -- at hearing his voice? Perhaps Clark's query had been a shot in the dark after all?

Lex let go of the switch, breaking the circuit, then stood up slowly.

"Lex, be careful."

"I will," he told her, and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek before he left.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	11. Chapter 11

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex took the elevator down.

When the doors opened, he blinked, then moved back away from the doors, and to the right.

Clark walked right in.

...and leaned back heavily against the opposite wall, arms spread out and braced against the short bar lining the sides of the elevator car, obviously to help hold his weight. He was watching Lex suspiciously.

Lex hit the button for the first floor. "Feeling better, I presume?"

Clark nodded once, not taking his eyes off of Lex as the doors closed.

Lex decided to lean against the other side of the elevator, facing the button panel.

"Lana's here."

Lex glanced over at Clark, and nodded once.

"She gave you directions to the elevator?" Lex asked mildly, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"Yes."

Lex nodded to himself absently and turned back to face forward.

After a while, Clark said, "We're pretty far down."

"Yes, we are," Lex agreed, as the numbers ticked upwards from the sublevels.

"...Why are we moving so slowly?"

"It's a safety measure," Lex told him, and glanced over at him to gauge his reaction to the next piece of information. "This facility was originally designed to house, contain, and possibly quarantine, meteor freaks and other superhumanly-powered individuals.

"...What?" Clark said, looking taken aback, if not outright unsettled.

Lex sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"We called your mother after you collapsed from exposure to the antidote," Lex told him. "You were barely breathing, and your pulse was thready. She denied that you were allergic to anything." He raised his head and looked at Clark again. "But she contradicted herself in the process. It was clear that she was lying." Clark looked away. "She withheld information, and then demanded we wait for her to arrive, rather than take you to a hospital."

"So you took me here instead," Clark didn't look very happy about it.

"It was going to be at least a seven hour drive for her to get to us, obeying traffic laws," Lex told him. "You do remember how fast you were driving the car, don't you?"

Clark dropped his gaze down to the side, but nodded tersely.

_So he does remember,_ Lex thought.

"That doesn't explain why you brought me here to one of your remote, _deserted_ facilities instead of dumping me at the nearest hospital and leaving," Clark pointed out darkly. The way he was holding his shoulders... he seemed very tense.

Lex gave him a long look.

"We were worried about you," he told Clark.

"You were? Or Lana was?" Clark asked, glancing up at Lex, then looking away again. He also didn't exactly look or sound happy at _either_ thought.

"We both were," Lex repeated, stressing 'both' lightly, as he watched Clark. "Especially after we called Olsen and sent him back to the woman who originally made both the lipstick and the antidote. He managed to get the 'recipes' for them out of her for us, and when we heard that powdered meteor rock figured predominantly in the ingredient lists for each, and approximately how much of it..."

Clark went very quiet, and very still, except for the slight tremors (of fatigue?) running through his frame, that he did not seem to be able to control (or suppress) just yet.

"You said you weren't a meteor freak, and I worried that, perhaps, what you were going through might be an overexposure event." Lana hadn't sprayed Lex with nearly as much of the antidote, and it was likely that he had a low-level passive power already -- his white-blood cell count was three times that of the average citizen of Smallville, and the meteor-exposed human beings in town already had a significantly higher-than-normal count on that front. Clark, on the other hand, had been exposed to fairly large doses of both tinctures, and had claimed that he wasn't a meteor freak already.

Lex looked away from Clark, who wasn't responding to his explanation in any meaningful way, and went back to watching the floor numbers tick by slowly. Very slowly. "Given the possibility of your having obtained new powers, and the high incidence of meteor-rock psychosis in newly-empowered individuals, we both thought it prudent to isolate you for a short time, just in case."

"Right. Because that was more important than getting me to a hospital," Clark muttered.

Lex glanced down at his watch. "You yourself have expressed reserve in being admitted to hospitals before on multiple occasions," Lex said cooly, "and your condition had improved slowly," _very slowly_ , "but surely over the intervening miles, enough that it was becoming more of a worry what damage you might do when you woke up if you were in the middle of a hospital that was not equipped to handle meteor-powered individuals," _or a van with the two of us right there,_ "than whether you yourself would eventually recover from the overexposure itself."

Lex sighed as the elevator finally passed the seventh sublevel, heading for the sixth. "The building also has a fully-equipped medical lab, if further care became necessary. And it was closer than the nearest hospital."

"...There are doctors here," Clark said evenly.

Clark's flat tone had Lex glancing over at him again. "No," Lex said. "But I do know some minimal first-aid. I've gotten myself some EMT training, due to recent events," _and we could have made due with that._ "The facility isn't yet operational. It's tangentially related to project 33.1, but we haven't progressed far enough along in some of our research yet for it to be worthwhile to keep the facility staffed 24-7." He turned away. "It is rather remote, after all."

"...So it's just you, me and Lana, here."

"Yes."

Clark was quiet for awhile.

"Would you have rather that we took you to a hospital, instead?" Lex asked him, glancing over again. "If you might have woken up and proceeded to hurt people, due to a lack of control or otherwise?"

"...No," Clark said quietly.

Lex nodded once and let out a short breath. Given his muted and baseline-normal responses -- well, baseline-normal for _Clark_ , anyway -- Clark really wasn't under the influence of the red meteor rock mixture anymore. It was no small relief.

"So you can see why we thought it best to isolate you," Lex said rhetorically, looking down, "given that overexposure to such high doses either seems to cause the 'jitters' immediately -- which your symptoms did not match -- or newfound meteor powers in most others, which generally are not exhibited while unconscious." He adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves. "Of course, the alternative possibility to power-development from meteor-rock overdose that would make it prudent to isolate you is that you are Kryptonian, which would also explain your negative reaction to the--"

Lex had said what he did in a light, almost joking tone, but Clark's reaction was immediate and unexpected.

Lex slowly looked back up as the elevator came to an abrupt stop between the sixth and fifth sublevels.

Clark was standing in front of him, almost looming over him, with his hand still slapped over and across the 'stop' button. And Lex felt Clark's strong searching gaze bearing down on him with an almost tangible weight.

"...meteor rock," Lex finished belatedly, then returned Clark's aggressive attention with a bland, calm demeanor. Waiting, without expectation.

Then he noted aloud, "You're still sweating heavily." Clark was also clearly having trouble staying upright. "Are you feeling all right?"

Clark looked slightly startled, then clenched and unclenched his jaw.

"What did you do to me," Clark demanded quietly of him, almost (but not quite) leaning over him.

Lex held his gaze and did not look away for an instant.

"I helped transfer you from the hotel room to the converted van that Lana had driven to catch up with us," Lex told him. "I made sure that you continued to breathe and still had a pulse, while we determined the contents of the chemicals to which you had been exposed over the course of the day, with Olsen's help. After your vitals had improved somewhat, I spent time trading off driving shifts with Lana to move you to this facility."

Lex took in a deep breath, and continued. "Once we arrived, I transferred you to a wheelchair, and, with Lana's help, I moved you down to one of the lowest sublevels and set you up in one of the shower stalls, because we decided that you needed to be removed to a place that we could isolate from the rest of the facility if necessary, and because you needed to be held in a location that would keep you warm and continue to clean away the sweat that we thought might have been a beneficial reaction, attempting to expel whatever material you were allergic to from your system."

Lex paused, then continued. "We debated the necessity of setting up an IV drip to help keep you hydrated, but you woke up well before it would have become a pressing issue. You were, and still are, sweating heavily."

Clark's eyes narrowed slightly, and he leaned forward, staring deeply -- and suspiciously -- into Lex's eyes.

"You're leaving something out," Clark said slowly.

"I'm leaving quite a bit out," Lex said. Yes, he had skipped over what he considered trivialities ...or at least things that Clark didn't need to know right then... but all of the high points had been covered. "You haven't had your condition assessed by a doctor yet, medical or otherwise," Lex informed him. "Would you like to be?"

"No," Clark said tersely. "I don't trust your doctors."

Lex didn't bother with pointing out that being seen by a doctor would involve driving to a hospital because, as he'd said earlier, there were no doctors on the premises currently.

Instead, he just nodded once, acknowledging Clark's preferences in the matter.

"Is there anything I can do to help you feel better, or recover more quickly?" he asked Clark calmly.

Clark stared down at him for a long time.

"Get me out of here," Clark demanded of him abruptly. "Get me outside."

Lex gestured at the elevator control panel, which Clark was blocking at-present. "May I?"

Clark slowly shifted his weight, then took one step sideways. Carefully. Likely in order to remain upright.

Lex pressed the button for the first floor again.

"I apologize that it's taking so long," Lex commented.

"Then speed up the elevator."

"It doesn't move any faster than this, Clark," Lex said mildly.

"Yes, it does," Clark said quietly, with such a firm undertone that Lex looked over at him again. "It didn't take you nearly so long to reach me after you said you were coming down, as we've been taking to get back to the first floor."

Lex paused. The hallways had no indicator lights to show where the elevator cars were located at any given point.

"What makes you think that I came down from the first floor?" Lex asked Clark without inflection.

"Because that's the button you pressed when we first got on," Clark said. "And if you were really that worried about anything I might do, or the possibility of my getting loose anyway, you'd want to have a fast escape route -- straight outside to a car, or that van you were talking about, and away. That's ground level."

Lex let himself give Clark a small, congratulatory smile. "You're right, of course," he told Clark, turning away from him to face forward again. "That was our reasoning process. And the elevator moves much faster downwards than back up. As I said before, it's a safety protocol. I think that you can understand why that would be, as all the containment levels were built farther down than the levels meant for common personnel and staff."

Clark leaned heavily against the far wall, staring at the back of the elevator like he wanted to bore holes in it with his gaze.

"I guess you've got great reasoning for stuffing me someplace such a long trip from the building's hospital facilities if something went wrong," Clark said in an almost biting tone.

"The medical lab that could serve as a hospital is on the lowest level, one level lower than the floor you were on," Lex informed him.

Clark's response to this was an uncomfortable and quiet, "...oh."

"If this facility was staffed," Lex continued, "that floor would remain empty unless and until the doctors on-call, stationed at higher levels, were called down for an emergency situation," he told Clark. "It's normally kept clear in case any inmates or otherwise dangerous individuals attempted to dig down, rather than escape upwards, in a worst-case scenario, and were actually successful in doing so." Lex sighed and looked away. "My people do have the occasional smart thought from time to time," he told Clark.

"...So, all anybody'd have to do to get valuable hostages would be to have someone fake being really sick, get the doctors to take them down to the hospital area, and then have the rest break out and use the elevators that move faster downwards to let them quickly surprise everybody one level down, once your people were down there," Clark said quietly, still staring at the back wall. He nodded once, to himself, grimly. "Right."

Lex forced himself to take in a slow, deep breath, and not react. At all.

Except to slowly move his gaze over to Clark again.

He watched Clark stand where he was for a moment or two, and then, without apparent cause, Clark grimaced and then cringed inward slightly, like he felt an internal pain, or some passing illness. He watched Clark lean heavily against the wall, close his eyes, and lift a hand to rub the base of his palm against the side of his head. ...or, rather, to almost _grind_ it inward.

Lex quickly moved his gaze back to the elevator control panel.

From then on, until they finally reached the ground floor level, the elevator really could not move fast enough for his comfort.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This is the end of the backlog of writing I have for this one (yeah, I know, I thought I was gonna need another few more editing passes after the last couple -- crazy, right?). Hope this isn't too bad of a cliffy for people! :)


	12. Chapter 12

~*~*~*~*~*~

When the elevator doors opened and Clark moved forward -- and staggered, and nearly fell straight over -- Lex immediately moved himself to Clark's side and up and under his arm to help support him.

Clark leaned heavily on him, and Lex was barely able to brace himself in time to take the weight.

It took Clark a long moment or two to get him feet under himself again, and the way he grimaced as he straightened made it clear that he wasn't exactly happy about needing Lex's help -- anything but, really.

Lex didn't bother getting angry with him about it, because he had a sneaking suspicion that...

Instead, he kept an arm around Clark's back, ready to catch him again if he stumbled.

Clark tried not to lean on him at all; in fact, once he was out of the elevator, he pulled away from Lex and all but fell against the far wall of the hallway, panting with exertion.

At this rate, Clark was likely to half-kill himself from the effort. "I could find the wheelchair and..." Lex began to offer, but at the narrow-eyed glare Clark shot him, he let it go. _Fine._ It wasn't really his problem. And once Clark collapsed and couldn't move at all anymore, maybe he'd be more amenable to listening to reason again.

"Which way," Clark all-but-demanded, and Lex indicated such.

...Not that he'd exactly been listening to reason before.

Clark leaned against the wall for a good half-minute, then pushed most of his weight back onto his feet again, and began to stagger down the hallway, in the direction Lex had given him, tilting back into the wall every so often to stop and catch his breath.

Lex walked along beside him, at Clark's own pace, watching him askance. He waited patiently, every time Clark stopped moving.

However, while Lex took great pains not to act impatient, Clark didn't bother to hide his irritation with his own lack of forward momentum. Lex did not find that surprising at all, considering.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Clark asked him with barely-suppressed anger. "Doing something else besides watching me stagger around?" There was more than a little strain in his voice about the last bit.

"It's the weekend," Lex said with a casual shrug. "So, no. I really don't."

Clark let out a laugh that just came out of nowhere. Lex, startled, couldn't help but smile back, because Clark... had actually sounded like he'd thought that was funny.

He watched as a few emotions flickered across Clark's face. Oddly enough, it seemed that Clark really _had_ thought it was funny. Because he'd seemed startled right after, then angry with himself for... what, not being angry with Lex for an instant or two?

Lex looked away, slid his hands in his pockets.

"The closest door to the outside is at the end of the next hallway, to the right of the junction up ahead," he informed Clark.

There was a long delay before Clark started moving again.

He didn't bother to try to watch Clark as they continued on down the hallway, since it seemed to upset him so much. He just tracked Clark in his peripheral vision instead.

Eventually, they reached the door -- a common emergency exit with a push bar to open it.

Clark came to a stop up next to it, and Lex realized he was getting a long look from him.

He tilted his head slightly towards Clark, and realized that Clark was looking at him _suspiciously_.

_Oh, for god's sake,_ Lex thought, and he reached forward and shoved the door open.

He turned back towards Clark and realized that Clark was staring out the door, wide-eyed, like he'd never seen the outside before.

"Honestly, Clark," Lex said with no small exasperation. "What did you think was going to happen? I'd open the door on a dark, cavernous room and say 'surprise, we're still underground'?" he asked of Clark incredulously.

Lex moved through the exit, then turned and held the door open for him.

Clark seemed to need to take a moment to steel himself, before he shoved himself off of the wall and grabbed the door frame. He half-pushed, half-pulled himself through and out, and barely kept his feet, staying upright about a foot past the opening.

He was looking around, still staring.

"Where are we?" Clark said quietly.

Lex blinked.

"New Mexico," he said, as Clark took another unsteady step forward and and not quite intentionally somewhat to the side while trying to keep his still-shaky balance. It was enough that Lex could let the door swing closed behind them. "About fifty miles south of the Colorado border," Lex added, given that Clark ought to have at least had some idea of what state they were in. Lex glanced around himself, then realized that maybe Clark's reaction came from the fact that, well, had Clark ever seen daylight in the desert like this before?

"There's nothing here..." Clark trailed off, sounding a little disturbed.

Lex looked up and around, paying more attention to their surroundings himself. There were some bits of scrub and brush here and there, and a few cacti farther out closer to the horizon, but... Clark wasn't entirely wrong. Besides the building at their backs, casting a short shadow down over them, and the long road back to the main highway nearby, there really wasn't much out here. ...And for good reason, given the dangerous nature of what the facility was eventually meant to hold.

"Well, Clark, you're the one who decided to drive us a bit further south than due west," Lex reminded him. Last night, he'd first thought they were in Utah, having stayed on I-70, but apparently Clark had taken a turn down onto Route 56 at the first main junction in Kansas. At least, that was what the convertible's GPS had reported to his security company, who had then given that information to Lana, when she'd demanded it in order to be able to track them down effectively on her own.

Lex let go of the door he'd been holding, and Clark downright spasmed in place at the sudden loud noise that it made when it slammed shut behind them. He twisted his head back towards Lex with a jerk.

Lex could only guess at what was wrong now. "The door isn't locked," he informed Clark blithely, sliding his hands back in his pockets.

When Clark did nothing but stare at him, Lex stifled a sigh, moved a step to the side, and proceeded to squeeze the catch-lever under the door handle, pull open the door, and then let go to let it swing shut again.

"It can lock, though," Clark said slowly, eyeing the handle.

Lex gritted his teeth for a moment before he forced himself to relax.

"I'll stay outside as long as you do, Clark," he said. "And there's plenty of water inside, once you're done trying to give us both sunstroke."

Clark didn't quite scowl at him, but his frown came pretty close to it.

"It isn't that hot out," Clark muttered.

Lex pulled Clark's leather jacket in a little closer around him. "No, it isn't..." he had to admit. Because yes, the weather forecast for the majority of the region that week was clear, with the daytime temperatures in the high 50's and low 60's, comparatively much warmer than a cold Kansas winter. "But that doesn't mean we can't get sunburned out here easily." Even in February, the New Mexico sun was still no joke. "And too much sunlight can upset the body's mechanisms for regulating temperature. You already need to keep your fluids up, to replenish some of what you've lost from before, so--" Lex paused as Clark turned his back on him and took another two staggering steps forward and out of the shadow of the building. _Not listening to him._

Lex clenched his jaw again and stepped forward himself, about to grab Clark by the arm and forcibly drag him back into the shade, _the idiot,_ when Lex realized something that had him catching his breath, coming to a screeching halt, and taking two quick steps backwards away from him in rapid succession.

Because the moment Clark had stepped out into the sun, he'd come to a standstill and his head had dropped back. And the look on his face was...

Eyes closed against the sun, eyelashes fanned out barely brushing his skin above his cheeks, and his hands dangling loosely at his side, he looked _transported_. The lines and creases of pain pulled tight across his face were easing, rapidly draining away as the sun beat down on him.

Lex pushed down panic. Clark hadn't _been_ around anything that should have given him specific, sunlight-dependent powers. Yes, he was a farm-boy-person, who dealt with plants day in and day out, but meteor freaks tended to get powers dependent upon their _situation_ , from when they were overexposed, and Clark had been in a moving vehicle for most of the night, and then more than a hundred feet underground since then. If Clark had ended up with meteor-freak powers, they should have been something that would get him _out_ of a situation like that, _while_ sunlight-deprived. _Needing_ sunlight to do... whatever he might do... was so far the opposite extreme of that, it just made no sense whatsoever.

Lex still watched Clark with no small trepidation as Clark swayed slightly in place, head tilted back. And Lex reminded himself that, while Clark had told him that he wasn't a meteor freak, Clark _had_ been displaying enhanced strength the night before, and on other occasions before that, so it was far more likely that this... whatever this was... was probably related to something that Clark could already do.

Cold comfort as that may be at the moment. Clark didn't generally run around doing things like that; not unless he was under the influence of something like...

Like...

Then Lex remembered Clark's reaction to the crack he'd made in the elevator on the way up to the surface, and a few things finally clicked into place.

...

_Oh shit._

...Lex really hoped that Lana hadn't put it together yet. If he was right about this, this would _so_ not go over well.

And having her ensconced in the bowels of the building likely wouldn't help her in the least, if Clark decided to...

Clark swayed from side to side a little more wobbly than before, and his knees gave out.

Lex didn't have much time to do anything other than wince, as Clark hit the dry, hard-packed ground **hard**. And so did his head.

Damn, Clark hadn't even tried to catch himself.

Lex moved forward and over to him, and crouched down beside Clark. He watched Clark blink open his eyes and struggle to push himself to a sitting position. And Clark looked nothing so much as _confused_.

"You fell over," Lex told him, as Clark turned his head this way and that, and finally focused on him.

"I... whuh?" Clark said intelligently.

Lex grimaced.

"Come on," Lex sighed, pushing himself back to his feet, and holding out a hand to Clark. "Let's sit in the shade for a bit."

It hadn't exactly escaped Lex's notice that, despite the seeming pain-relieving effects of the sunlight, the lines of strain in Clark's face and shoulders hadn't exactly _gone away_. The sunlight wasn't actually helping him. At best, it was only masking some of the symptoms of whatever was going on with Clark just then.

Which was meteor-rock poisoning, most likely, even if it wasn't causing the jitters in him like it would in anyone else.

...Clark wasn't just anyone else.

Clark stared at Lex's outstretched hand like he didn't have any idea what it was for. After a good several seconds, which felt like a lot longer than Lex suspected a clock would report to him, he slowly reached up and grasped it.

Lex helped haul Clark to his feet, counterbalancing him with his own weight. He did note, however, that, while still unsteady, and weaving much more of his feet than he had been before, Clark was somehow more able to hold his own weight on his own two feet now than he had at any point since he'd first woken up in the bowels of the facility alone.

Lex managed to get Clark back over to the side of the building before he collapsed again, and they were both sitting with their backs against the wall next to each other in short order.

Lex leaned back, let his legs splay out in front of him and his head rest against the wall behind him, and watched Clark sideways out of the corners of his eyes.

Clark pulled his legs up loosely, not quite close to his chest, and was curled forward over them. His arms were resting across his knees, and his head was bent down, his forehead leaning against his forearms. He groaned softly and shivered.

He was still sweating.

Lex wasn't sure how long they both sat there, though it wasn't long enough to easily track the motion of the sun in the sky. What Lex did know was that, before the sun was high enough overheard that the building's shadow was gone, Clark shuddered violently and let out a low moan.

Lex straightened, and he saw something drip out of... somewhere -- _Clark's **face**_? -- and impact the dry, dusty ground. He only had about a second to view it -- barely enough time for it to register that the lost fluid was largely green, with traces of red -- _blood? oh god_ \-- and for it to strike him how likely _not good_ that was, before Clark slumped and keeled over onto his side.

Lex managed to grab him before his head hit the ground, but only barely. He pulled Clark up and towards him, trying to take his pulse.

It was racing, and erratic, and so was Clark's breathing. He was all but gasping for breath, and his arms and legs were twitching slightly, almost like he was having a mini-seizure. ...except for two things of note.

Clark's muscles were anything but tense -- rather, flaccid and unable to flex properly.

And, if the general direction of those twitching, misfiring motions wasn't a failed attempt to get away from him, the way Clark's eyes were locked on his were a pretty good indication of Clark's intentions. So were the outright panic and fear in them.

If Clark was having a seizure, all his muscles ought to be locked up, not loose. And he would be in no way conscious of what was going on around him, or able to track Lex with his eyes as he did.

Lex doubted that what was happening to Clark now was exactly a good sign, though.

Lex moved out of the way and carefully lowered Clark to the ground. Then Lex rocked back on his heels, and slipped Clark's coat off of his shoulders. He folded it, then gently lifted Clark's head and placed the soft leather underneath him as a pillow.

"Just breathe," he told Clark quietly, trying to calm him. He doubted that Clark's panic was exactly helping things. "Just breathe, and..." Lex honestly didn't know what to do. Clark was going to have to ride this out, whatever it was; there wasn't anything Lex could do for him at this point, and likely not anyone else. And it wasn't as though Lex could tell him that he'd be 'okay' when he had no idea of that himself.

He touched Clark's forehead lightly, then pulled away, then thought the better of it and ended up patting him somewhat awkwardly, very lightly, from time to time.

Clark's eyes had tracked him during all of this, his mouth working oddly, and his earlier panic had slowly bled out to be replaced with confusion. Not by what was going on, but confusion specifically with him, it seemed. And, after a point, Clark just gave up, or gave in, and let his eyelids droop. His breathing evened out considerably, and it was only then that Lex realized that Clark hadn't been gasping earlier -- he'd been trying to _talk_.

Lex felt his lips thin grimly. He closed his eyes and forced himself to regain his earlier outward calm.

He didn't like this. Not one bit.

The fact that, even if he had set aside both Clark's and Martha's well-known dislike of doctors and brought Clark to a hospital, the doctors there would likely have been able to do no more for Clark than Lex himself was doing just then, didn't really help matters. Even Lex's own LuthorCorp doctors would have no idea how to deal with this. Half the time they couldn't even treat the meteor freaks with stabilized powers properly, and Clark wasn't...

The sun rose a bit higher in the sky, and Clark's condition slowly improved. He was sweating heavily again, and still very pale.

...That is, right up until the shade disappeared on them.

The shadow of the building had shrunk to a mere foot or so at best, and one of the clouds above finally drifted across the sky and out of the sun's path.

When the sunlight hit Clark this time, he gasped in a long deep breath and relaxed completely. And, within less than half-a-minute, Clark's color and all-around health had visibly improved to the point that, had Lex not seen it with his own eyes and been dealing with it for hours and hours prior, he would have wondered whether Clark had ever really been sick to begin with.

Lex brought up his gaze and stared at the dust over by the wall, and the rapidly-dwindling wet stain that was there, that had been quickly soaked up by the dry ground.

The green, from this short distance, was a rather notable shade, one which Lex was very familiar with. The red in it hadn't turned brown as it had dried, and it occurred to him that it likely hadn't been blood, but rather...

Lex sighed. He doubted he'd need to have the good square foot of the dirt surrounding it extracted and tested, in order to confirm that what Clark had expelled somehow, from either eyes or nose or mouth, had been pure meteor rock, or close to it. He'd been right in his earlier thought inside, that Clark might still be partially under the influence of the original red meteor-rock tincture. But for Clark to be able to expel any type of meteor rock completely from his system?

_A neat trick,_ Lex thought tiredly, glancing down at Clark, who by the look of things was truly asleep now where he lay.

That was likely a good sign, especially given that he wasn't entirely sure how 'restful' Clark had found his night in the showers down in the bowels of the sublevels of the building. He could only guess how much of a difference lay between 'unconscious' and real rejuvenating sleep.

It did occur to him that Martha had been right, though: Clark had been fine, after all. And it wasn't as though that had really been due to much of anything either he or Lana had done, either, he surmised.

Still not exactly the most reassuring of thoughts, but it gave a far more benign explanation for Martha's seemingly-blithe behavior than Lex had feared originally might be the case, late the previous day's night. That ought to count for something.

Lex patted Clark on the head awkwardly again, then held himself still as Clark shifted where he lay. From the look of things, Clark wasn't having any problems controlling his limbs _now_.

Hopefully that was a good sign, and not a very good reason to, say, panic about what might happen when he woke up again.

...Well, at least he didn't have to explain to Mrs. Kent how her (adopted) son had died on his watch?

Lex took a deep breath in and slowly let it out again.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	13. Chapter 13

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark woke up slowly, blinking his eyes open to the glare of the sun.

He was lying on his side, like he had been when...

Clark rolled over and sat up immediately, whipping his head around to figure out where Lex was--

\--sitting in the dirt, casually leaning back against the wall of the building, legs extended, reading a book.

He was wearing a large white floppy sunhat on top of his head.

Clark blinked. He blinked again.

"Why are you wearing--" Clark began, until the current unreal reality of his situation took a backseat to the reality of _other_ people's situations, and he shook his head abruptly and scrambled to get upright, because "--oh god, _Lois!_ She--"

"Lois is fine," he was told, and Clark halted halfway up, then straightened to his full height ...then thought better of that and dropped into a crouch in front of Lex.

"What do you mean, 'she's fine'?" Clark repeated. "She's not fine! She's anything but fine! She is the _opposite_ of fine!" She'd been acting _nuts_ the last time he'd seen her, and...

_\--oh, hell,_ Clark thought as the rest of his memory caught back up with his brain. He jerked backwards and dropped awkwardly into a seated posture, back on his butt, and raised both hands to his forehead, caught halfway between facepalming and pulling out his hair. _Oh, no._ He was so dead. D-E-A-D-dead. Dead-with-a-capital-D dead. Because Lois--

Lex marked his place and quietly closed his book. He tilted his head back slightly to gaze at Clark straight-on.

"Chloe used the antidote on Lois first," Lex told him. "That was how Lana knew about it, and knew where to get it from." Lex shifted his legs, pulled one knee up loosely towards his chest and casually dangled an arm across it. "Luckily, the only ill side-effect she seems to be suffering from is short-term memory loss for the time period during which she was under the influence."

"What?" Clark blurted out, because short-term memory loss didn't sound like a bad--

_\--Wait._ If Lois didn't remember, then...

...

...Clark wasn't sure if he was feeling more sick with _relief_ or... something else.

And then it occurred to him, what Lex had meant when he'd said in the elevator that--

Clark swallowed, and he glanced away from Lex. He bit his lip slightly.

"I--" Clark began.

"-- _ **Don't**_ ," Lex cut him off immediately, harshly, and Clark winced, hard. "I know you remember; don't pretend that you don't."

Clark glanced at him, then had to look away again. Lex's eyes were bright blue and stormy and terrifying in their intensity. Clark swallowed; he felt his jaw clench slightly. He tried to force himself to relax. He was outside. He could run away if he had to.

Then he remembered something else. Something much, much worse that he'd almost done.

He slowly drew his knees up to his chest, suddenly feeling very exposed.

"Is--" Clark began, then broke off, feeling miserable. He didn't even have the right to ask, after what he did. And what he'd almost done.

"...'Is'?" he heard Lex prompt him, neutrally.

He felt his head drop, and he couldn't force himself to even look at Lex while he said it. "Is--" and he grimaced and stopped, tightened his arms around his knees. 

Clark heard the soft 'thump' of a closing book being set aside on dry ground. And then he didn't hear anything else, except the wind and the scrape of sand upon sand and the sound of Lex's breathing and heartbeat.

Lex didn't say anything. He simply waited. ...It was worse than if he'd said anything at all.

Time passed.

Clark closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steeling himself. And Clark asked, "Is Lana okay?" knowing full well that she wasn't, she _couldn't_ be okay after what he'd almost done, he'd _attacked_ her--

"Yes," said Lex, and that had Clark snapping his head up to stare at Lex in shock.

_What?_ Clark stared at him in disbelief and, shocked but unhappy to do so, he began to protest. "But I--"

Lex leveled a look at Clark that had him snapping his mouth shut almost immediately. "Did you want her to be hurt?" Lex asked of him, though the hard intensity of Lex's gaze locked with his belied the mildness of his tone.

Clark felt a shiver go down his spine and his mouth dropped open in shock. "What? I--"

But the _No! --of course not!_ that he tried to voice got caught somewhere in the back of his throat, and he all but choked on it.

He couldn't get the words out. Because it was a lie. Because he _had_ wanted to hurt her, at the time.

He took in a breath and dropped his eyes as he tried to force himself to say 'no'. But it almost physically hurt, trying to get the words out, and failing. Because _that_ kind of lie was--

"Do you want to hurt her now?" Lex asked next, and Clark snapped his head up and practically spat out--

"NO!!" Because how could Lex even _think_ that--

"Good," said Lex, and Clark glared at Lex, while horrible, nasty black feelings twisted around inside his chest, because, Lex, how _dare_ he--

Clark screwed up his face and opened his mouth, about to read him the riot act, up until Lex dropped his chin, looking to the side as he shifted in place, _getting more comfortable_ leaning against the building wall in a casual almost-slump.

Clark closed his mouth, clenched his jaw, and looked away, forced down anger and frustration and the urge to _hit_ something, as Lex more-or-less seemed to ignore him while he resituated himself.

"--I was drugged!" Clark reminded him angrily, to which Lex said:

"I know you were drugged."

Clark clenched and unclenched his jaw. "I wasn't myself," he got out tersely.

Lex, having finally finished settling back in place, raised his head, then poked a finger up at the underside of the floppy hat to clear his field of view again, and Clark just had to grimace.

"Clark," he said calmly, meeting Clark's gaze again, "In my experience, drugs do not turn a person into a completely different person." Clark was about to interrupt when Lex added, just as calmly, "They... _merely_... remove a person's inhibitions, to a varying degree."

" _I wasn't myself_ ," Clark repeated, and he really wanted to tell Lex off for assuming something like that about him, but he couldn't do that without explaining that... well, that he was an alien, so things were different for him. He wasn't like _Lex_ , or anybody else.

Lex kept on giving him a long look.

"What are you even doing, wearing that," Clark said grumpily, crossing his arms and staring at the Thing on Lex's head. "You don't like hats. --Where did you even get that," he complained.

Lex blinked at him.

After a long pause, Lex asked, "...Are you trying to change the subject?"

Clark frowned at him. "No, _you_ are." First he'd tried to distract him with Lois (always an annoying proposition, Lex should've stuck with that, Clark could complain about _her_ for _ages_ ), then he'd tried to distract him with Lana, then the drugs and responsibility after the fact thereof (as if Clark didn't feel bad enough about it already). Obviously he didn't want to talk about the Floppy White Hat of Straw that was annoying him to distraction. _Clearly_ it was Psychological Warfare of some kind. _Clearly._

Lex tilted his head at him slightly, and Lex's eyebrows started to twitch, before he managed to get his _suppressed laughter_ under control. The jerk. He knew it -- Lex was _totally_ wearing it on purpose, just to annoy him.

Well, Clark didn’t have to put up with this. Not from _Lex_.

Clark got to his feet and moved forward. He had... a Plan.

"All right," said Lex, like he was indulging Clark somehow. He tilted his head up and told Clark as he approached, "Lana gave it to me."

"She's mad at you," Clark said immediately, as he dropped down next to Lex, back against the wall. Then he paused, because... "Wait. Why is she mad at _you?_ " Clark asked, feeling a weird mixture of confusion and... something else. "What'd you _do?_ " he wondered out loud, frowning as he pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, watching Lex sideways.

Lex just blinked at him slowly. "...Lana isn't mad at me," he said, eventually.

"Yes, she is," Clark said.

"No, she isn't," Lex said, and he actually seemed to believe it, which was even weirder.

"Yes. She is," Clark told him. "She knows you don't like hats, doesn't she?" He was pretty sure that she did, since the comments she had consistently made at Lex every winter since she'd opened the Talon whenever he came in for something hot to drink had been a lot more _pointed_ than 'teasing'.

That, and Clark had told her about Lex’s hat-dislike once, early-on, trying to get her to _stop doing that_ , and she'd just smiled at him wickedly and said, _'I know.'_ That was a pretty big clue, right there.

"Yes, she knows..." said Lex.

Clark frowned at him some more. "Well, isn't it itchy?"

"No," said Lex, looking at him sideways.

"It's made of straw!"

"It's got padding."

" _It's a straw hat_."

"It's fine."

"You are wearing a hat."

“I know.”

“Lana is making you wear a hat, when you don’t like any hats at all, ever!”

"I like some hats."

"You do not!"

"I do."

Clark eyed him, because he knew that Lex knew that cowboy hats were a part of work duds and therefore normal clothing; they didn't count. "She has you wearing a floppy, straw hat, for no reason."

"I wanted to wear it."

Clark wondered when Lex had gone completely insane, and when he'd missed it. Had it been before or after Lex had gone Completely Evil? (...Except not-evil, just _stupid_ , because apparently he'd tried to double-cross _Fine-BrainIAC_ of all things... but then, he'd started all that Project 33.1 stuff out of all that Level 3 stuff, too, so Probably Evil Anyway.)

"So, what, you found it earlier when you were looking for sweatpants and towels? There are sweatpants and sweatshirts and towels and _floppy straw hats_ here?" And that made Clark really wonder what in the heck Lex had planned on doing to the 33.1 people here anyway. (...That probably just proved his Psychological Warfare theory, right there.)

Lex frowned slightly at him.

"No," Lex said. "Lana got it for me when she was out running errands."

Clark stared at him.

“You _asked her to get you a hat?_ ” 

“...No.” Lex actually looked slightly embarrassed.

Clark gave him an I-told-you-so look.

“I asked her for something that would help keep me from getting sunburned,” Lex continued on.

“You don’t get sunburned,” Clark said.

Lex looked at him sidelong. “You say that like it isn’t possible.”

“How long were you on that island, again?” Clark reminded him with a light poke to the shoulder, because had he gotten horribly sunburned then? Uh, _no_. Not so much. Heck, he’d barely even tanned.

Lex glared at him. “There was shade there!”

“You asked for a hat? Not sunscreen instead?” Clark pressed.

“I--”

“Why did you even ask her for something like that in the first place?” Clark asked him, because that was just weird. Yeah, Lex had brought up the ‘sunburned’ thing earlier, but he’d been more worried about dehydration and the temperature and sunstroke than _that_ , and Clark didn’t see any water bottles lying around.

Honestly, why Lex would think of sunscreen before _water_ didn’t make any kind of sense. Stuff like sunscreen wasn’t even the kind of thing Lex would usually think of, and--

Ah. Ah-ha-ha.

“Did _you_ ask _Lana_ , or did Lana ask you _first?_ ” Clark asked Lex, already knowing the answer.

Lex was frowning at him, and his forehead crinkled a little more, and a little more, as Lex blinked at him, then blinked at him again.

His eyes narrowed.

“Thought so,” Clark said, feeling morbidly smug about it, because he totally understood Lana better than Lex did, and Lex was supposed to be her fiance.

“I don’t see how that--” Lex began testily, but Clark just cut him off with:

“Lana’s mad at you.”

“They ran out of sunscreen,” Lex informed him, sounding harassed, but that was just crazy-unlikely, wasn’t it? Someplace just running out of sunscreen like that? In New Mexico? ...Unless it was actually true.

“Where did she go?” Clark asked him, mystified.

“The nearest gas station,” Lex told him, not looking all that happy with him as he crossed his arms. “We’ve got tap water and some non-perishables here at worst, but we needed food and drink, and to refill the van with fuel in preparation for the return trip back.”

“The gas stations in New Mexico run out of sunscreen before hats?” Clark asked him skeptically.

Lex opened his mouth. And then closed it again. Then he opened it again to protest with a “Clark!” as Clark uncrossed his arms, reached over, and snatched Lex’s Hat Of Obscure Punishment up off of Lex's head.

It was part two of his Plan All Along. Part one had been sitting down next to Lex within arm’s reach in the first place. Part three was what he was going to do next, which he then did.

Clark put on the hat, recrossed his arms, and gave Lex his Most Sardonic Eyebrow. (He’d been practicing it at home in the mirror. It was meant to combat Lois, for the next time she was being Annoying In The Extreme -- which was every time, thus, basically, the next time Clark saw her -- so it should work on Lex, too.)

Lex stared up at him.

“Lana’s mad at you,” Clark repeated, for the fifth time. He wondered when his Eyebrow would start working.

There was a pause of a few long seconds as Lex looked up at Clark, and what he looked like wearing the Floppy White Hat.

“...You may have a point,” Lex acceded quietly, and Clark just huffed out a breath and removed the Hat, shoving it down into his lap. It had certainly taken long enough.

“No, really?” Clark said. That got him a glare from Lex, but nothing beyond that.

“I don’t get it, though,” Clark told him, frowning as he poked at the straw hat in his lap. “Why is she mad at _you?_ ”

“I don’t know…” Lex said, and Clark wasn’t sure if that was Lex being worried, or Lex being confused, or Lex really just not knowing. None of those things happened very often, in his experience.

Clark grimaced. Lana shouldn’t be mad at Lex; she should be mad at Clark. Lex hadn’t done anything wrong. And, yeah, making Clark look at Lex wearing a Hat like that was just plain _annoying_ (beyond also almost-definitely being a Punishment Of Some Sort, for Lex), but Lana didn’t usually think stuff through that far, or do stuff that deep. That was two layers deep, not one. Even Chloe didn’t do that. ...Actually, the only person Clark knew who was able to do something like that was…

_Argh._

“Does Lana have a working cell phone on her?” Clark asked Lex.

“...Yes,” Lex said slowly. “Why?”

“She called _Lois_ ,” Clark said with disgust, blowing out a breath.

Lex looked at him askance. “What are you talking about?”

Clark rolled his eyes, and slumped back against the building behind him.

“Lana’s mad at you,” Clark ticked off on his fingers, one by one. “Lois got tangled up in everything -- or, well, the opposite, whichever -- and I left her at the mansion. You didn’t like that, so Lana probably didn’t like that, either,” Clark explained. “She’d want to check up on Lois, anyway, since you both know Lois was drugged and not in her right mind; Lana would want to know if she was okay and talk to her, since they’re friends.”

“Yes…” Lex said, still obviously not really getting it. Clark did, though. He’d been having to field Lana and Chloe, then Chloe and Lois together, for _years_ now. Girls got _creative_ when they got pissed.

They also talked to each other behind your back and ganged up on you. “She probably told Lois what she knew that Lois couldn’t remember, because she’d want Lois to be able to get back at me a bit for leaving both of them there, and taking you instead. So she would’ve asked Lois what _she’d_ do, if she was here and her.” Clark sighed. “And since Lois is _annoying_ and lives for annoying _me_ , she would think up something like this and tell Lana, and Lana would do it. And did it. And annoy the hell out of me. Except Lois doesn’t know you so well -- or you don’t know her -- so the making-you-wear-a-hat part didn’t annoy you like it should have, too,” Clark told him.

Lex stared at him for awhile.

“How would Lane know me at all,” Lex said, finally, and he didn’t look like he believed him. Well, Lex _should_ , because he was right.

“Lois was dating Oliver; she would know stuff about you from him, and she would’ve asked, after the stuff that happened at the reunion while she was there, and especially after all that ‘bisexual’ stuff Oliver lied to her about, before she knew he was lying.” Clark rolled his eyes. “Plus, she’s an army brat. It’d be obvious to _her_ which hat, because that kind of hat would be the first thing she'd think of when she thought 'hat', so she probably forgot to be specific. Lana just got the wrong kind of hat,” he told Lex, looking over at him.

“It’s just a hat,” Lex said slowly, eyes narrowed. “I don’t _care_ \--”

“Baseball cap,” Clark said blandly, and Lex shut up.

And twitched.

Several times.

“So why is she mad at _you?_ ” Clark repeated.

“ _I don’t know_ ,” Lex repeated, sounding thoroughly frustrated with Clark. (Probably for being right.) “Perhaps I’m simply supposed to be a side-casualty of Lane’s temerity,” he said thinly. “Or _perhaps_ Lana **isn’t** mad at me, and didn’t buy a baseball cap **on purpose** ,” Lex told him, glaring daggers at him.

Clark frowned.

He thought about this.

He shrugged at Lex. It could be either-or, really.

Lex let out a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

“...Did we really just have this long of a discussion about my hat?” Lex said.

“Well, if you didn’t keep trying to _avoid_ the subject,” Clark told him testily.

Lex stared at him for about a minute and a half.

Clark blew out a breath and slouched against the wall behind his back, staring up at the sky.

He almost asked him ‘What now?’ except asking an Evil Lex for directions -- let alone _suggestions_ \-- would be asking for _trouble_.

...And then Lex messed things up for him anyway when he slowly breathed out a breath, rose to his feet, dusted off his pants with a few broad swipes of his hands, and said, “We should go inside.”

Clark eyed him skeptically from his seated position on the ground. “Why.”

Lex frowned down at him slightly as he reached down and picked up his book. “You want to stay outside?”

Clark debated saying yes. Then he debated saying no. Then he wondered if it had been a trick question.

In the meantime, Lex let out what sounded like a definite sigh and he sat himself back down on the ground again.

Clark eyed him sidelong.

“I think I can somewhat understand your reticence, Clark,” Lex told him. “After all, you did wake up under unexpected circumstances after a fight that did not quite go your way.”

Clark frowned at him. “Are you saying that not being drugged anymore and not hurting Lana was _losing?_ ” he asked Lex incredulously.

Lex gave him a bland look that Clark couldn’t interpret, other than it being bland. “Yes,” Lex told him. Clark stared at him.

“You’re saying I lost because I’m not drugged anymore and I didn’t end up hurting Lana,” Clark reiterated slowly, kind of appalled at the thought and wondering if maybe half of Lex’s problem in Being Evil Now -- or _making_ him evil, whichever -- was the fact that he seemed completely backwards about what Winning and Losing actually _meant_.

Lex gave him another long, bland, otherwise-unreadable look, though it seemed slightly more flat that the previous one.

“...No,” Lex said finally. “I meant that it wasn’t losing for _me_.” Then his lips thinned and he closed his eyes for a moment. “That isn’t the point.”

“There’s a point?” Clark muttered, crossing his arms. He didn’t get how Lex could decide to be an Evil Adversary of his and then think that they could _both_ win a fight with each other. Maybe he really _had_ gone Completely Insane.

Lex’s jaw clenched and he drew in a quick breath--

...and then let it out very slowly. And unclenched his jaw. It looked like he was trying for patience, which Clark found a little weird, or maybe just unnerving, given that they were sitting next to each other on the outside of a 33.1 facility, out in the middle of nowhere, with no-one else around.

Then again, maybe Evil was really, really patient. (Except when it wasn’t.) That would explain a few things.

“Right,” Lex said quietly under his breath, then drew in air again. In normal conversational tones, he said, “Clark, regardless of what did and didn’t happen in your drugged state, or how culpable you believe yourself to be, I don’t believe that how we interact has, or has to, fundamentally change.” He took in another breath. “As long as you don’t try to hurt Lana, or murder anyone else--”

“I’m not going to run around killing people!” Clark exclaimed, when his throat started working again after ‘murder’, because _what the hell--_

“...without a _very_ good reason,” Lex continued after a beat, eyeing him sidelong, and Clark wanted to smack him and protest that, except he wasn’t sure if disintegrating BrainIAC the first time had counted, _or_ the second time -- why did that stupid computer have to keep coming back, anyway!?

So Clark bit his lip and looked away, and then he gritted his teeth when Lex stopped talking and gave him a very long look for a very long time instead.

“...It’s not like what _you’d_ think would be reasonable would be reasonable,” Clark grumbled, crossing his arms again.

Lex didn’t say anything for awhile, and then he did.

“You know,” Lex began lightly. “I do believe that some of the trouble we’ve been having recently between us might be almost entirely due to a failure to communicate effectively as of late,” he told Clark.

“Uh, what?” Actually, Clark was pretty sure that had a lot more to do with Lex being Completely Evil now, but maybe he was going somewhere with this that wasn’t Completely Insane.

Lex turned to him. “I think we need to talk more,” he stated bluntly.

_Nevermind._ Clark pretty much thought the opposite, but didn’t say anything... -- _yet._ He settled for just frowning at Lex for now, deciding to save it all for whenever Lex eventually got to his ‘point’, instead.

“And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Clark,” Lex continued on, oblivious to the amount of metaphorical rope Clark was handing him to let him hang himself. “But we used to talk a great deal more when we were friends instead of… what we are now.”

_...And there we go._ That hadn’t taken long.

“That’s not _my_ fault,” Clark grumbled, glaring at him sideways. Because it wasn’t. His fault. Because when your so-called friend sends a hit squad of meteor freaks after you to try and kill you and hold your family and your girlfriend-at-the-time hostage (...not in that order…) because they’re trying to force you to admit that you’re more than just normal, that kind of crosses a line. (The Creepy Stalker Room has been bad enough. Either time; it wasn’t like Clark was going to forget anytime soon that Lex had done it twice. But at least Lex hadn’t been trying to actively _hurt_ anybody with it. It wasn’t like he’d tried to crash his already-crashed car into him _again_ or something, only on purpose that time. ...Though if he had, that _would_ have sucked.)

Lex glanced at him sideways, then looked away. “I know.”

Clark blinked. “What?”

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” Lex said, with a strange sort of odd calmness. “It was mine.”

Clark stared at him.

"I'm sorry I tried to force you to admit that you're a meteor freak by sending meteor freaks after you," Lex told him mildly, as he crossed his hands in his lap.

“I’m not a meteor freak,” Clark told him, because he wasn’t.

“I know,” said Lex, looking up at him. “But I thought you were one at the time, so that was what I had been trying to get you to admit by doing that to you.”

Clark frowned at him.

"I'm sorry I tried to force you to admit that you're a meteor freak by sending meteor freaks after you," Lex repeated, just as mildly as before.

And then Lex stopped talking. And didn’t say anything else.

Clark stared at him in disbelief. What was he trying to do?

He seemed to be waiting for something.

...Was he really trying to apologize? Why _now?_ And hadn’t he already done that last night?

Clark stared at Lex.

Lex kept on sitting there and waiting.

He was waiting for Clark to… _what_ exactly?

Last night, Clark had pretty much forced Lex into it. Apologizing, for that. (And then, because he’d been super-high on the Red, he’d…)

But Clark hadn’t forced an apology out of him this time -- he hadn’t even seen it coming. (So if Lex was apologizing on purpose _now_...)

_\-- **NO**._

"You can't be serious," Clark said, feeling like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach.

Lex got a small smile. He sat there, and waited.

Clark stood up abruptly. "You can't be serious!" he exclaimed, staring down at Lex.

Lex's smile only got a little wider, and his eyes were dancing, laughing at him almost.

"That's _not_ \--" Clark sputtered. "You can't just--!"

"I'm sorry I tried to force you to admit that you're a meteor freak by sending meteor freaks after you," Lex repeated serenely, and it was all Clark could do not to _growl_ at him.

“You _can’t_ just--!”

Lex sat there, and smiled at him, and waited. Patiently. _Expectantly._ Like he knew that…

\--well, _of course_ he knew _that_ , Clark had told him just last night!

Clark gritted his teeth, and clenched his fists, and flared his nostrils as he let out a pent-up breath of frustration through his nose, and--

Clark narrowed his eyes.

“You know what?” Clark said. “ _Okay_ ,” he bit out tersely.

Lex blinked up at him. “‘Okay’?” he said, and he didn’t sound nearly wary enough for Clark to be happy about.

That was fine, though. Clark was going to fix that really quick.

Clark nodded at him once, shortly. “Yes,” Clark told him. “Okay.” He stretched his lips sideways in a thin smile. “I’ll forgive you.”

He saw Lex take in breath to respond, then stop when the contraction registered.

“-- _If_ ,” Clark said slowly, leaning in and looming over him a bit, “You go and apologize to my mom for it, _too_.”

Lex stopped smiling. Really quick.

He stared up at Clark from his seated position, with his back to the wall, and he went a little pale.

_Hah,_ thought Clark. _Take **that**._ Because maybe Lana would forgive Lex for something like that right away -- she’d forgiven Whitney all sorts of crap real easily, even if she never forgave _Clark_ for anything -- but _his mom_ , on the other hand, would read Lex the riot act, and… well, there was no way Lex was going to do that, put himself through that.

Clark smiled and locked gaze with him.

Lex looked up at him and swallowed. Hard.

But then he got a small, wavering smile.

“All right, Clark,” Lex said quietly, and Clark had to frown a little at him as Lex slowly got to his feet.

“What?”

“All right,” Lex repeated, face-to-face with him. “That’s fair. She was there; I should apologize and ask forgiveness of her, too.”

Clark got an uneasy feeling between his shoulder blades, and under his stomach.

“...Fine,” he said, but now he wasn’t so sure about everything. Was he really just agreeing to be friends with Lex again if he apologized?

Okay, yes, if he apologized and _meant it_ , then…

\--But he was Evil now!

Clark shifted uneasily as Lex picked up the straw hat -- Clark hadn’t realized he’d dropped it; he’d forgotten he’d even been holding it before -- and said, “It’s getting late. We should at least go inside and get something to eat and drink.”

Clark frowned a little, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that would really change anything. He crossed his arms and looked away, feeling even more uncomfortable, now.

Seeming to take his lack of response as a go-ahead, Lex turned around, walked the few feet away from them, and opened the door.

Or, well, tried to. The door just rattled in place.

Lex stared down at the handle and tried again.

Rattle. No motion.

Lex frowned.

Clark walked over and looked down at the handle. “You locked it?”

“No,” said Lex, staring down at the handle in consternation.

Clark reached out a hand to try the handle himself. He carefully squeezed the lever inside the door handle up, and carefully pushed.

The door didn’t open.

Huh. Okay…

“Do you have the key?” Clark asked him, letting go and stepping away.

“No,” Lex grimaced.

Great. Lex had locked him-- them outside. Not that Clark exactly wanted inside again all that badly.

Clark considered asking, ‘So, how did you lock the door?’ and instead settled for, “I thought we were the only ones here.”

“We are,” Lex told him.

“Then who locked the door?” Clark asked Lex, who was checking his watch on his wrist. He didn’t look happy.

“It’s a weekday,” Lex said.

“...Okay?”

“It’s automated,” Lex told him, taking a step back from the door himself.

Clark looked at him sideways.

“It’s a little after five P.M. It probably locked automatically at the end of the workday,” Lex explained, looking annoyed, or maybe just a little worn out. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“How did you get in before?” Clark asked.

“We went in the garage entrance; there’s a card reader there.” At Clark’s look, he added, “It can read driver’s licenses, the magnetic stripe on the back.” He made a vague gesture.

“Do you have your wallet on you?” Clark asked.

“No,” Lex sighed. He turned and started walking away, following the side of the building.

“What about your cellphone?” He’d had one on him last night, hadn’t he? Even if he’d seemed to forget he’d had it on him -- he hadn’t tried to use it.

“Inside, charging,” was Lex’s abbreviated reply.

Clark glanced between Lex and the door, then jogged after him to catch up. “We can’t just bang on the door until Lana lets us in?” he asked.

“I doubt she’s here. She said she was going to go out again for more supplies after the first supply run, once she had a proper map,” Lex explained.

“How long until she gets back?”

“I don’t know,” Lex said. “But we have a better chance of getting in if we go around to the garage entrance. If she’s inside, she’ll be able to hear us from there if we bang on the doors, or see us on the security cameras -- I know the high bay has them. I’m not sure the outside camera perimeter for the doors was ever installed, or hooked up to the main monitoring system, at least.”

Clark blinked. It was probably a good thing he hadn’t tried to run off or disappear on Lex, then. They might have gotten him on tape. There was no ground cover here to hide a quick exit, if he ran off.

“And if she isn't back yet, at the very least she’ll see us on the way back in,” Lex finished, as they continued walking along.

Clark grimaced a little, but he kept on walking. Following Lex. Who was still as Evil as he’d ever been, despite the unforced apology he’d made.

He had a feeling that he was probably going to regret this...

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
